Danish privacy activist Lars Andersen raided by police

92 pointsposted an hour ago
by I_am_tiberius

54 Comments

Quothling

40 minutes 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_Lens

37 minutes 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.

sword_smith

an hour 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.

bawolff

42 minutes 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_smith

37 minutes 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.

bawolff

33 minutes ago

You dont have to give up equality under the law, you just have to accept that there is a lot more that goes into a prosecution than the act. Were witnesses cooperative and credible, what was the intent, what was context.

I dont know the specifics of this case. Maybe there was a miscarriage of justice. But just the fact the acts are the same doesn't show that. There is a lot more factors to consider.

sword_smith

23 minutes ago

Your obfuscation carries no argumentative weight, as the uncertainty your obfuscation attempts to introduce might as well be used in the reverse: maybe the guy who made the original threat (that was not prosecuted) had a criminal record involving violent crimes whereas Lars' text obviously should be taken in the political, non-violent, activist context that is his modus operandi.

teiferer

4 minutes ago

> might as well be used in the reverse

I don't think they would reject that. In fact, you are arguing their point: It's the context that matters, not just the act. Without knowing the context it's not valid to presume a particular scenario.

Not sure how that's "obfuscation".

zazazache

an hour 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

34 minutes 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.

teiferer

3 minutes ago

Next step would be to cut the cells too.

bypdx

29 minutes ago

Privacy advocate with Google-nest cameras inside his home?

foder

7 minutes 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.

jchw

6 minutes 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

6 minutes ago

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

selcuka

an hour 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?

tchalla

10 minutes ago

> What would happen if the owner was armed

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

messe

4 minutes 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.

pikeangler

28 minutes ago

This is Denmark, nobody except gang members is armed

Hamuko

42 minutes 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.

selcuka

38 minutes ago

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

klustregrif

24 minutes ago

This is Denmark not America, there is literally no risk to their life.

breppp

29 minutes ago

I think the gun proliferation situation in Denmark is probably different than the US

breppp

21 minutes 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

bawolff

an hour 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_smith

42 minutes 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.

bawolff

41 minutes ago

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

sucrosesucrose

8 minutes ago

The lifes of powerful people must be transparent.

selcuka

34 minutes 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.

throw562

38 minutes ago

Another authoritarian govt

klustregrif

an hour ago

Calling the self declared Internet troll a privacy activist feels disingenuous. This is the former corrupt cop turned drug dealer who publicly and proudly proclaimed that he was stalking the children of the prime minister of Denmark so he could figure out where she lived, because he wanted to expose those details.

She currently lives at a secret address due to security concerns.

foder

26 minutes ago

The tone of the post sounds like smear since it entirely dismisses his advocacy of personal liberty with claims that havn't been published in Danish media as far as I know.

It would be interesting if you could elaborate on the claims that be was a corrupt police officer and drug dealer.

My understanding of his own account is that he left the force when he wasn't comfortable arresting people over weed and that he saw systematic abuse of power that he didn't want to partake in. Is there more to the story?

His recent activism has been focusing on contrasting the privacy people in power demand with their work to deny the broad population privacy.

klustregrif

14 minutes ago

> you could elaborate on the claims that be was a corrupt police officer and drug dealer.

This is public record. It’s entirely published he’s charged and received a prison sentence for the crime, the investigation into corruption started but needed early when he handed in his resignation. which is just proof that he was a corrupt cop in a corrupt system. I mean no drug dealer who gets charged is going to get off by going “ok I’ll quit then”.

> My understanding of his own account is that he left the force when he wasn't comfortable arresting people over weed

This flips the script. He public made statements that he would carry drugs on the job, and felt I’d should be legal, and that he wouldn’t enforce the drug law. The investigation that followed he handed in his resignation. And the corrupt Danish police force being what it is, dropped the investigation.

His “activism” has since consisted of amongst other things starting to sell drugs and then claiming that its activism when he got charged with prison for it. To be clear, he didn’t stage the public sale of a symbolic amount to get arrested and protest through civil disobedience. He straight up went breaking bad and started a drug peddling operation.

Hamuko

9 minutes ago

>And the corrupt Danish police force being what it is, dropped the investigation.

How is that corruption? If the issue was that he was saying he wasn't gonna do his job, and then he quit his job, wouldn't that just rectify the situation?

sword_smith

an hour ago

Lars was a corrupt cop? Are you just using "corrupt" to mean "someone I don't like"?

klustregrif

an hour ago

I don’t care if you think drugs should be legalized, or even if you do drugs in your free time. If you are a cop doing drugs while on duty and decide to take it on yourself to not enforce the law against drug dealers you are corrupt, because you have decided to subjugate the law you are forced with enforcing. Now it’s true that he wasn’t officially charged with taking kickbacks from the drug dealers he would let operate but in my optics that is entirely due to them letting him hand in a resignation to stop the investigation, propably to protect his fellow cops who would have been named and shamed for also doing drugs on the job. But to be clear, deciding to protect drug dealers in your job as a cop is. It activism it’s corruption.

Claiming it’s about ideology defies the point. He spent years as a cop letting drug dealers deal drugs and then came out saying the only reason he was breaking the law was because he didn’t believe in it. That’s not ideology that’s corruption. If he had decided to stop being a cop to not enforce a law he didn’t like that’s different. But that’s not what happened. He quit hen his illegal enterprise got caught. Cops do not get to enforce the law selectively based on what laws they like and dislike and get off just by claiming “ideology”.

zaptheimpaler

27 minutes ago

This is the slave mindset that is letting politicians all over the world erode our rights. More and more and more. Every country is now passing deep anti-privacy, anti-VPN, anti-encryption and age-verification laws. The law is not written by us, its written by people who are only barely accountable to us once every couple of years. Authoritarianism is rising very sharply all over the world, corruption amongst the elites is high, they are increasingly unaligned and unafraid of common people. There's a million tricks to pass laws that citizens don't really want, including skipping public debates, secret amendments, or just relying on plain old propaganda and ignorance/inaction by the majority. The only actual power we have is in action and organization. Following the laws that they write with barely any input from us off a cliff is not right or noble, its death.

sword_smith

39 minutes ago

Corruption is defined as "the abuse of entrusted power for private (usually financial) gain". Lars' case falls under the category of conscientious objection, as he's ideologically motivated. Pretty disgusting to frame that as corruption.

tommica

an hour ago

Highly doubt that is the only reason he got this treatment. Need to go through his tweets to figure out what is his deal.

klustregrif

38 minutes ago

The guy constantly does crazy shit so sure, but this comes days after he announced he was stalking her children, so it’s very likely connected

mhitza

an hour ago

What security concerns? Of a person telling people where you live?

Are the homes of Danish prime ministers secret?

foder

15 minutes ago

I think some context is being lost in a literal translation.

I think they mean secret as in unlisted where their records aren't accessible in public government databases. The same protection you would get if you were stalked for example.

mhitza

8 minutes ago

I get that it's a secret location now, but I don't understand in context if this activist is the trigger of the situation. An if so how can this be considered a threat.

Stalking falls under the broad category of harassment in my eastern european country. I feel as if this would be a non issue given an official police warning. At most.

klustregrif

11 minutes ago

No, it’s not just unlisted number and address. PET (Danish equivalent of FBI) by administrative decision has had her move out of her Copenhagen apartment and to an undisclosed location due to security concerns. Her and her family are literally under protection due to security concerns and this guy is stalking her kids trying to dox her.

bazoom42

an hour ago

Usually it is not a secret, but currently the prime minister and her family live at a secret address.

throwaway27448

an hour ago

Regardless of intent, this does reveal that certain people are protected by warrantless arrests while the general public is not.

bawolff

an hour ago

Did his arrest not have a warrant? I'm not familiar how these things work in Denmark, but is there any reason to believe there was no warrant?

throwaway27448

an hour ago

Presumably if they had one they would have told him the charges, but I am not sure how the danish law works so perhaps my assumption is incorrect.

bawolff

44 minutes ago

At the same time, i would presume if his arrest was this irregular and illegal he would be taking it to actual court instead ofthe court of public opinion.

throwaway27448

41 minutes ago

Are these exclusive opportunities? I'm not familiar with danish law.

bawolff

38 minutes ago

Not exclusive, but in general its a bad idea to post on social media if you plan to take it up in court, as its very easy to accidentally say something that shoots yourself in the foot.