RIGA — Passions over nationalism and privacy have erupted in Latvia after a website published names of car owners who have displayed or are displaying Russian symbols on their automobiles.

The site’s webpage — www.latvietislatvija.com/AUTO/ — calls the list the “occupant automobiles” and describes those listed as “disloyal car owners” who are displaying “Russian imperial symbols.” The list contains about 120 cars with the owners’ names, addresses and personal numbers.

The site's owner chastises ethnic Russians in Latvia that have put a Russian flag on their automobile.

The site does not offer any information about its sponsors or managers, which has led to questions about who placed the information, which while not publicly available is more or less easy to access, on the site. Russian language media impugned the site, and there have been calls for Latvia’s Security Police to launch an investigation on the basis of illegal publication of private data.

The site is linked to Visu Latvijai, a nationalist youth organization. However, Visu Latvijai immediately issued a denial and threatened to take the paper to court.

The justice ministry told Baltic News Service on Thursday that an investigation has been launched into possible violations of the Personal Data Protection Law.

“The investigation is ongoing to find the offenders and block the illegal circulation of personal information,” Jana Saulīte, a justice minister spokeswoman, said. “Individuals can be imposed administrative fines from 50 to 400 lats (€70 to €570) for such offenses and organizations 1,000 (€1,400) to 8,000 lats (€11,200).”

Publishing lists of ethnic minorities is not new in Latvia and is actually one of the oldest methods of “flushing out” anyone who is considered disloyal, or potentially disloyal, to the state. In the first years of independence, for instance, several papers printed the names and home addresses of Russian army officers who were still living in Latvia.

More recently, many ethnic Russians in Latvia began adorning Russian symbols in and on their cars approximately two years ago, particularly tri-colored flags on top of the dashboard, on a wave of nationalism that followed Russia’s victory in the Eurovision Song Contest and its semifinal showing in the European soccer championship. The trend was bound to anger nationalist Latvians, who look upon anything symbolizing the Soviet Union and Russia with the same resentment that the swastika evinces anywhere in Europe.

The trend is particularly disturbing given the riots that took place in Estonia nearly three years ago after authorities removed the Bronze Soldier monument from a downtown Tallinn square.

The decision to remove the monument was sparked by a May 9, or Victory Day, celebration the previous year when several Russians began waving the Soviet flag, a particularly odious symbol for many Balts. This enraged Estonians, and over the following months politicians launched a campaign to move the Bronze Soldier statue to a military cemetery.