Danish privacy activist Lars Andersen raided by police

https://twitter.com/LarsAnders1620/status/2068208864747540516#m

by I_am_tiberius • 1 month ago

434 287 1 month ago

https://xcancel.com/LarsAnders1620/status/206820886474754051...

zazazache• 1 month ago

Pretty tricky by the cops to turn off power directly and to steal his cameras. Shows that if you are concerned something like this would happen to you that you need to invest in more resilient solutions. Probably something with batteries and also hidden.

ethagnawl• 1 month ago

They did this to Afroman, too. Though, in his case, they didn't lead with the panel and the result is the infamous video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0bNy7XO-SCI0 It makes you wonder how much of an effect this incident has had on protocols.

But, yeah, depending on your threat matrix, you might want to consider hidden trail cams with their own cell service.

teiferer4• 1 month ago

Next step would be to cut the cells too.

bawolff13• 1 month ago

The prefece to the story is, that I in a kind of roundabout and (I think) humorous way published "my two favorite numbers" by spelling out a 10 diget and a 8 diget number with letters. I didn't tell what they ment, but they where prime minister Mette Frederiksen's social security and phone number

Umm, so was he arrested for doxing the prime minister? Is there more to the story than that?

As someone who cares about privacy, arresting people who dox other people seems like a good thing. Obviously i want that to apply to everyone not just the rich and famous, but still at the end of the day i have trouble objecting to someone getting arrested for doxing people.

sword_smith5• 1 month ago

That same prime minister supports the warrant-less use of medical records in police work and the ban of encryption through chat control. She wants to prevent the Danish population from having privacy, but demands it herself. Sorry, but that's not the Western way.

bawolff13• 1 month ago

Just because you disagree with someone does not make it ok to dox them.

internet_points• 1 month ago

Politicians these days are expected to have harder and harder skin. I've seen lots of stories in the news lately of (in particular young) politicians from scandinavia who dropped out of politics due to harassment, anonymous threats etc. And even more people who never get into politics, because of hearing about such stories. I sure as hell would not get into politics today.

I fear for what our political system will look like when only those who have become completely numb to such threats remain. What kinds people are they, those who can live with hundreds of daily hate messages and death threats, doxing of oneself and family members, having to live with security guards and secret addresses? What are we losing by allowing this kind of "freedom of speech"?

If your morals consist of eye-for-an-eye retribution, then maybe his actions make sense. But I do not believe that that gives us a better society.

selcuka6• 1 month ago

Obviously i want that to apply to everyone not just the rich and famous

Do you really want armed and masked police to break down the doors of people who dox others, disable their cameras, and arrest them while refusing to tell them the charges? Because without these details this would have been a non-story.

lemagedurage2• 1 month ago

Both sides are not looking too pretty here.

bawolff13• 1 month ago

Most of the time i would want the arrests to proceed in a more civil manner unless the situation warranted otherwise, but ultimately yes, i think doxing/harrasment is a crime and people who commit it should be arrested and tried.

spragl2• 1 month ago

I think what is much more important, is that it exposes the shortcomings of the Danish SSN system.

It was introduced in 1968, when Denmark was a high-trust society. It was used as a sort of password and key for looking up your information. If you wanted to create a bank account, you told them your SSN. If you wanted to buy a car, you told them your SSN. If you had any contact with the authorities, you told them your SSN. And so on.

The usage has changed, but not that much. So today, when trust in Danish society is not as high, the system falls short. Identity theft. Privacy. Scamming. They have to be detected and stopped by other means.

The proper path forwards would be to radically change the system (or the society).

selcuka6• 1 month ago

When the two civilian dressed masked men entered the apparentment

I think this is very irresponsible. What would happen if the owner was armed and harmed the police thinking that they were criminals?

Hamuko• 1 month ago

What would happen if the owner was armed and harmed the police thinking that they were criminals?

A hefty prison sentence for illegal handling of firearms and attempted homicide would be my guess.

selcuka6• 1 month ago

I was thinking of the police officers. Why risk your life for such a petty crime?

jopsen3• 1 month ago

First time murder is typically gives around 12 years in Denmark.

Sentences are not added up. So yes, trying to shot a police officer will definitely get you decent sentence -- it's not hefty by American standards.

pikeangler• 1 month ago

This is Denmark, nobody except gang members is armed

sgt• 1 month ago

Well, and the police.

wqaatwt13• 1 month ago

There are supposedly ~10 civilian owned firearms per 100 people in Denmark. I doubt there are that many gang members there?

orbital-decay• 1 month ago

This is a very... US comment to make.

impossiblefork3• 1 month ago

Yes and no.

Weapons are normal here too.

JuniperMesos2• 1 month ago

There have been cases in the US where homeowners shot cops dead who were in the process of unexpectedly raiding their home, because the homeowner had no idea they were cops and not home invasion robbers; and in some cases have been acquitted of murder charges by juries for this.

I'd personally like to see the laws protecting this strengthened, to make sure that cops aren't charging unannounced into peoples' homes and then charging the homeowner with murder when they react with reasonable gun violence in self-defense.

koonsolo3• 1 month ago

No it is not. Europeans can have guns, and there was a recent case in Belgium where such a thing happened.

l23k45• 1 month ago

I'm fully European, would not wonder for a second before plunging a knife into an intruder if I happened to have one near me.

edelbitter• 1 month ago

A German police officer was fatally shot in 2010 after failing to identify himself when his manipulation on the door had alerted the known-armed subject of a planned search. The shooter was (eventually) acquitted. Though the circumstances were rather unusual, the court noted that in that specific case, the inability to ascertain the nature & extent of the threat within available time made acting this way based on his assumptions excusable.

https://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/D...

selcuka6• 1 month ago

I've never lived in the US. Spent the majority of my adult life in Europe, and the country I currently live in (Australia) has very strict gun laws.

That being said, if I were a police officer I wouldn't rule out the possibility.

tchalla2• 1 month ago

What would happen if the owner was armed

Might as well talk about unicorns as we are imaging this scenario in Denmark.

messe• 1 month ago

You can own multiple guns and store them at your residence in Denmark. I know a couple of people who do so, admittedly both ex-military.

This isn't limited to shotguns or bolt action rifles for hunting. You can own up to six handguns.

You do need to be licensed however, and given Andersen's history he probably wouldn't be permitted.

jakkos• 1 month ago

While this is still bad, If you watch the video, the officers announce themselves and enter with empty hands... it's very different from videos of "raids" by US police that I've seen.

sword_smith5• 1 month ago

Lars is good at exposing the hypocrisy of the Danish government. In a former case he, sent the exact same threatening text to a prosecutor as that prosecutor had received a police report from a third party about, and that the prosecutor refused to pursue. Lars got jail time for that. Rules for thee but not for me.

bawolff13• 1 month ago

Or alternatively, 2 wrongs don't make a right.

Even if the text message was exactly the same, there are plenty of valid reasons why one might be prosecutable and the other might not be.

sword_smith5• 1 month ago

Sure. If you accept that we give up on equality before the law, one might be prosecutable and the other not.

Some of us prefer not to give up on that though.

arjie• 1 month ago

Indeed, that’s why selective prosecution is an effective weapon. The consequences are asymmetric and demonstrating selectivity is impossible without exposing oneself to the downside. It’s definitely a stable incumbent regime tactic.

wickedsickeune• 1 month ago

You are correct that two wrongs don't make a right, but I think that it is obvious that the threat was not real, only symbolic. Therefore it wasn't "wrong". Meanwhile the original, not prosecuted threat message, was real. It's clear that it shows both vindictiveness and unwillingness to protect certain people.

egorfine3• 1 month ago

exposing the hypocrisy of the Danish government

Does that change anything?

righthand2• 1 month ago

Does he have any power to change anything? Or does he have only power to expose the abusers and corrupted?

Only taking action because you can change corrupt ways doesn’t actually change anything because the average person has no power to do so. And the proper channels are gummed up to not change anything.

What Lars does is possibly inform or change perspective of those unfamiliar with their nation/world-state.

alper• 1 month ago

Rules for thee but not for me

This pretty accurately describes lots of stuff going on here in Germany as well and well the state of most of our "liberal democracies".

Quothling2• 1 month ago

I'm Danish and lars kragh andersen is a bit of a grey zone. He obviously goes over the line, he tried to put GPS trackers on the cars of ministers. He "stalks" their families, and dox their children online. He gave an interview on how he'd ignore people carrying a kilo gram of weed when he was a cop because he doesn't agree with the "war on drugs".

On the flip-side, he's sort of right. I assume that putting a GPS tracker on the car of our minister of justice is illegal, but that same minister (Peter Hummelgaard) is one of the key forces behind anti-encryption here in Europe. Similarily the politicians he stalk and harras are pro Palintir getting access to all our data, so Lars Andersen is sort of giving the politicians a taste of what they want to give everyone.

He goes way too far though. Especially if he actually wants change, the way he "protests" is directly damaging his own cause, since nobody is going to sympathise with harrassing children.

I suspect next time he'll have his cameras running with backup powers though.

N_Lens2• 1 month ago

I expect he’ll be justified and vindicated in history if we end up in a global totalitarian prison planet scenario that seems to become more possible as the tech reaches that capability. “For the safety of the children” ofcourse.

AnonymousPlanet• 1 month ago

What kind of history will a totalitarian prison planet write, I wonder.

pluralmonad4• 1 month ago

Maybe we should begin asking, "whose children, specifically?"

xiphias2• 1 month ago

I think the sim cards are more important: he wrote that Nest switched to local recording mode and the police took the evidence.

rexpop• 1 month ago

he'd ignore people carrying a kilo gram of weed

This is an unequivocally reasonable approach. The prohibition of cannabis is a grotesque charade.

angry_octet2• 1 month ago

A kilo of weed is clearly a dealer, and part of organised crime. The same people are deeply involved in forced sex work and people trafficking, extortion, illegal weapons, etc. There is a clear difference between end users and small time dealers and the distributors.

gaiagraphia6• 1 month ago

I personally would like the police to come down hard on unauthorised and unregulated chemists. Not a fan of dealers being tax exempt, either, given the negative externalities their services provide.

pembrook5• 1 month ago

I don’t think he goes too far at all.

If politicians are attempting to undermine your children’s right to privacy forever, and yet these same politicians don’t like when this is being done to their own children…it shows either an astonishing level of hypocrisy and/or stupidity.

Europe is filled with these types of authoritarian urbanites, who make decisions from an elitist “i know what’s best for you” attitude while eating 6 course dinners. This is the same class of European leaders who steered the regions entire energy/economic/social policy so bad that the whole European model of the last few decades is in slow collapse and fiscally unsustainable. Yet ironically, the most common phrase you’ll hear while eating these 6 course dinners is “sustainability.”

These people are some of the worst hypocrites on pretty much every topic imaginable and need to be called out for it.

Quothling2• 1 month ago

This is what I meant by the grey zone. I personally think it goes too far, but I agree with the point you make here. Where it becomes problematic is that the method does not get the point across to any audience which doesn't already agree with them.

Compare this to Jesper Graugaard, who is know locally as the "Chromebook-dad". He's been campaigning against big tech in our schools for like a decade, and after 6 years we recently had a ruling forbidding our cities from using Google services without proper data ownership agreements. He's obviously not the only party behind this, but he's a massive force in the agenda against non-EU tech in our schools. He does it through reform and political campaigning.

Jesper has wide public support, Lars is not viewed favourable. This story hasn't even hit our news, I've only heard about it here on HN.

dmurray• 1 month ago

Even if you don't think he goes too far ethically, you can probably agree that it's reasonable for the police to intervene once he's interfering with the cars of government ministers.

monegator• 1 month ago

He goes way too far though

that's what activist have to do to shake people

raverbashing2• 1 month ago

[flagged]

kakacik2• 1 month ago

Attacking families is firmly across the line and looks like crazy man's personal vendetta. Who can vouch he won't go further and ie won't kidnap a kid to achieve his goals.

No wonder he gets raided, at one point it becomes a topic about protecting one's family, left or right, moral or crook doesn't matter anymore.

Its not activist anymore in any meaningful sense, just a fanatic.

Gareth321• 1 month ago

I have heard this claim before but I find it unconvincing. I have given up support of movements for which activists have acted cruelly or otherwise immorally. Obviously one person doesn't represent a movement, but if I only ever see immoral people leading a movement, that will form a basis for my opinion of the movement.

My observation of these activists is usually that they seek attention at any cost. They will hurt people to achieve that attention. Worse, I don't even think it's about the movement. They just want the attention personally. Others in the movement tacitly condone this behaviour.

I think the most frustrating part of this is that they claim it's to raise awareness. Who among us has not heard of global warming? Who has not heard of data privacy? The reality is that they're not getting the public support they desire because people just don't agree with their goals or beliefs, not because the public is "unaware."

bawolff13• 1 month ago

that's what activist have to do to shake people

That's also the line most terrorist groups use.

Its not exactly wrong i suppose. 9/11 did get Americans to think about the middle east a lot more.

dark-star• 1 month ago

doxxing and/or stalking the kids (minors) of the person you disagree with is still kind of a d*ck move though

tim-tday2• 30 days ago

Going too far turns me against you. The more righteous your cause the more pissed off I am at you when you’re excess discredits it.

dataflow5• 1 month ago

I'm confused reading this. How in the world is GPS-tracking someone's car supposed to show hypocrisy with respect to encryption?

egorfine3• 1 month ago

Because this someone wants to know location of everyone in the country while his own location should be of course private and protected.

skeaker• 1 month ago

"You take my privacy, I take yours" would be the thought process here. Not complicated.

Lerc2• 1 month ago

He goes way too far though. Especially if he actually wants change, the way he "protests" is directly damaging his own cause, since nobody is going to sympathise with harrassing children.

I don't think this is a given. Just Stop Oil says that their tactics do make people hate them, but their research tells them that it still makes peoples opinions on the issues move in the direction that they want them to. Their position is that if they achieve what they want while gathering animosity towards their organisation, once achieved, they can disband.

joe_mamba• 1 month ago

but their research tells them

Thier "research" might be full of yes men.

pcrh• 1 month ago

This is referred to as shifting the Overton window. If voices from the extreme are not heard, the Overton window moves away from their position, so protests help their cause even if only a minority completely agree with them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

warumdarum• 1 month ago

Its a know tatic to sponsor the extreme fringe to discredit a cause. Just stop oil receiving oil money?

flumes_whims_• 1 month ago

Isn't Just Stop Oil funded by an oil heiress?

basilikum3• 1 month ago

but their research tells them that it still makes peoples opinions on the issues move in the direction that they want them to.

I'd really like to see that research.

redeeman• 1 month ago

but all he does is things the politicians thinks are perfectly okay to do to the "plebs" they are supposed to represent.

when they do it, its A-OKAY, but if he does even 1/10, its the worst catastrophy in the world.

anfogoat• 1 month ago

This is interesting and all but is ultimately just an aside. Are the law enforcement actions on display here legal in Denmark? If not, surely there's prison sentences in store for anyone involved. Right?

jopsen3• 1 month ago

Probably not illegal, questionable ethics. Which could have consequences, but probably not.

Regardless, this is enormously dumb. If you want to search and arrest an activist who crosses the line, you make it as boring as possible.

tim-tday2• 30 days ago

lol. No. If anything there would be a minor slap on the wrist for violating procedure. I sincerely doubt the police will get in any trouble for what they did.

raxxorraxor• 1 month ago

I know of Peter Hummelgaard and I am not even from Denmark. Just because his work and plans. He certainly deserves that tracker and then some...

bazoom422• 1 month ago

Very charitable to call it a “grey zone” to stalk and dox children of politicians you dislike.

ceejayoz2• 1 month ago

Isn't the point that those politicians want to do precisely that to others?

WinstonSmith84• 1 month ago

He obviously goes over the line, he tried to put GPS trackers on the cars of ministers. He "stalks" their families, and dox their children online.

I agree with you that he goes over the line, but only if these ministers are totally unrelated to the measures they are trying to impose on the population. If not, he just gives them a taste of their own medicine.

MisterTea• 1 month ago

He gave an interview on how he'd ignore people carrying a kilo gram of weed when he was a cop because he doesn't agree with the "war on drugs".

This is about as far from "over the line" as I can imagine.

throw562• 1 month ago

Another authoritarian govt

bypdx• 1 month ago

Privacy advocate with Google-nest cameras inside his home?

foder• 1 month ago

Lol, yes.

He describe himself as an anarcho capitalist so I guess, ideologically, it is government surveillance that he is concerned with and that the free market will sort out the rest.

hdgvhicv2• 1 month ago

Hilarious take, why ban it by accountable governments but not unaccountable companies (which can then sell to accountable governments anyway)

freedomben• 1 month ago

Where did you see anarcho capitalist? I only saw "libertarian" (which is not the same thing).

jchw• 1 month ago

Maybe he wanted to make sure a lot of copies of the evidence were floating around. Surveillance capitalism is like a free unlimited backup service you can't restore from.

brador• 1 month ago

On device recording, so at least the illusion of privacy.

ale42• 1 month ago

How did he get the videos out of the cameras that were seized if the recording was also not uploaded? Can Nest cameras upload/stream to private servers? (never had one so I have no idea)

polack• 1 month ago

I was on a consultant-assignment at a company that got raided by the police in the EU. The police was extremely careful not to scan any data that where stored on US-servers. The company used Google for mail and file storage, so all computers had to be taken offline before they could scan them.

While I don't doubt they have a way of getting permission to access that data, I don't think they will put in the effort unless you're a relally big fish.

pjc50• 1 month ago

The police was extremely careful not to scan any data that where stored on US-servers

This seems exactly backwards to what I'd expect, I wonder what the official rationale is.

spragl2• 1 month ago

Yeah, he seems confused to me. Well meaning, but not so consistent.

What is good is that he is a wrench, that throws itself in the works repeatedly. This is a healthy thing to have.

breppp2• 1 month ago

The archetype of the whining activist. Getting himself in idiotic trouble so he could benefit from the status of a victim and ensuing drama

teiferer4• 1 month ago

If the goal was to maximize attention to the event (in order to use it to steer attention towards the cause) then it was quite successful, no? After all, we're talking about it here. Mostly about him and the details of the event, but some sub-threads are about the cause too.

So, success?

klustregrif3• 1 month ago

Success in what exactly? There a very strong political movement in Denmark towards protecting privacy rights, then there’s this nutjob who just got out of jail for bribes, harassment, death threats against politicians and immediately he starts stalking the kids of the prime minister.

He’s not doing anything for the cause he claims to fight for. He’s doesn’t want a right to privacy he wants to be allowed to continue to sell drugs “in private” from the government. And he thinks freedom of speech should cover his freedom to harass and threaten politicians which it doesn’t and shouldn’t.

itwaswatson• 1 month ago

*winning

Sorry, you made a silly typo that made you look bad. I fixed it.

m00dy• 1 month ago

I bet he lives in Amager because his door looks very similar to mine when I was living in there.

SG-• 1 month ago

People didn't blink when Comey posted a photo of 8647 and got indicted for threatening the president, imagine if he posted Trumps SSN.

teravor• 1 month ago

i guess they weren't trying to get his computer in a powered up state.

IceDane• 1 month ago

Nobody in Denmark actually thinks of Lars Andersen as any sort of serious privacy activist. He is a drug-addled moron who just happens to dabble in those things. He's an idiot and contributes nothing of value to society.

burnt-resistor2• 1 month ago

If cops are supposedly worried about cameras and believe turning the power off stops it, then put a UPS on the DVR (if present) and each camera.

tao_oat2• 1 month ago

Because no one has mentioned it here: Lars Andersen is also a right-wing extremist who regularly posts racist content on social media. His privacy/free speech activism seems to be (at least partly) motivated by this.

I think this is useful context for evaluating his judgment.

gaiagraphia6• 1 month ago

An example would've been nice.

All too often people throw around the racist buzzword without ever actually providing evidence. It's as if we're expected to just blindly trust and follow that somebody is now excommunicated from modern society.

tao_oat2• 1 month ago

Sure thing. If you view his X profile without logging in, nearly all his top posts demonstrate what I mean: advocating for remigration (i.e. ethnic cleansing), comparing Muslims to monkeys, supporting far-right figures like Tommy Robinson and Rasmus Paludan, sharing YouTube comments with racial slurs...

microsoftedging• 1 month ago

https://x.com/LarsAnders1620/status/1885254465160118655, first one that comes up when I view X (not signed in). I don't think this is enough (as OP declared) to authoritatively place him in 'right wing extremist' but probably racist. I don't speak danish, but someone that could would be able to make a more complete judgement because most, if not all posts of his, are in Danish.

marysol52• 1 month ago

Simp much

Fnoord• 1 month ago

A Danish privacy activist (not a protected title) using Google Nest.

On a second thought (addendum), ...

1) Publishing PII like phone number of a high profile person in your society is causing them harm since they obviously put effort into not having such out in the open. (e.g. I can find anyone's phone number in my country via leaks. No big deal... but I shouldn't publish such. I shouldn't possess such data either.)

2) SSN is a different category of PII. Publishing this of anyone is an invitation of harm, even more so of a high profile person in your society.

It is akin to inviting people to DDoS a website, or blocking them physically access to exit their house. That kind of thing. Except that on the internet, anyone can abuse this. Even people (including criminals) in foreign countries, residing in hazardous jurisdictions (e.g. Russia).

Either way, what's the point of publishing such information? When German activists published the fingerprint of a German minister, they were making a point. They got the fingerprint via a glass of wine, but the interesting point is that a fingerprint cannot be revoked. It isn't used to authenticate a password, but a user(name). It should therefore not be used as single factor.

marysol52• 1 month ago

Calling yourself a "privacy advocate" while gloating that you posted PII is quite something

gaiagraphia6• 1 month ago

I guess it's like castle doctrine for the information space. Something like "your right to privacy stops when you openly try to undermine mine...".

I see it as a morally valid approach. Politicians are well within their power to not be corrupt and value the US/bigcorp/oligarch x over the people they vowed to represent.

Svendike• 1 month ago

Whatever Lars may be, the fact that a lawful arrest could not be filmed sucks. I can find other reasons behind needing to cut the circuit breakers during an arrest of a hacker in an effort to secure evidence.

Peter Hummelgaard on the other hand, can just fuck right off. Former head of the ministry of justice seriously argued that the mass surveillance initiatives he led were right because he "felt" it...

seb12043• 1 month ago

Twitter is even the place for this kind of news? What does people keep there?

4ggr0• 29 days ago

I shouldn't have clicked on his profile. Sorry for him for being raided by the police, but I didn't expect a "Privacy Activist" to be so focused on openly disliking muslims and migrants. I'm not logged in so maybe that says more about the twitter algo, but a lot of what I saw was posts and reposts hating on these groups of people.

remigration, monkey comparisons, generally some awful stuff. yikes. Just focus on privacy, dude.

Danish privacy activist Lars Andersen raided by police

Related Stories