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.
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 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 and need to be called out for it.
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.
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.
People who dont pretend it has zero negative consequences as well. I understand the medicinal uses, most people arent even doing that, but we are overlooking so many things. I think someone should fund serious studies that look at all the benefits and negatives, sadly we dont live in a perfect world.
Probably best thing that can happen to your country.
Edit: On a more bright side - at what point does the game of criminals masquerading as activists / journalists come to end. I remember listening to Flock founder say entire LA's or SF's police was being run by criminal gang. Reading some of the extremist comments here it seems the gangs made their way here too, trying to manipulate people.
They're probably not being sarcastic. Wrong, and ppssibly evil, but not sarcastic. There are some weirdly big Palantir fans on HN. No clue what drives them, but I'm guessing they're not keen students of history.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The intent and context are obviously better for the one who's clearly sending the "threat" as a political statement against selective enforcement.
> 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
... and you're willing to give the benefit of doubt to those with power here. You are aware you're making that implicit statement, right?
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can. But ammunition and the guns have to be stored in separate safes. And it's essentially impossible to get off with a self defense claim if you have time to gather your legal guns
Just because Denmark doesn't have the same gun laws, culture around using guns for self-defense, or prevalence of guns as the US does, it doesn't mean that Danish police face no risk when they raid someone's home. Anytime the cops raid someone's home, regardless of whether or not is it a legitimate raid of a legitimate criminal, it's a violent act and there's risk that the cops will be hurt or killed.
Since 1945 12 cops have been killed in the line of duty (excluding traffic accidents), mostly when responding to a violent crime (trying to stop bank robberies lead to 6 of those fatalities).
The activist is well known. They likely knew he would answer the door, yet they still broke it down. In the U.S., you'd probably shoot some dog in that situation, if one was available.
The entire scene is probably not meant as effective policing, but as punitive theater. This also explains why they disabled the cameras, as the theater was not intended for content reuse.
Given that, I'd assume they knew he wouldn't shoot them or do anything even remotely like that.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
That's a bit simplified, isn't it? He's pointing out precisely that "doxing" the entire population of Denmark shouldn't be acceptable to her, and that she's literally not accepting herself being "doxxed." If it was about, I dunno, pizza toppings or school budgeting, then obviously the actions would have been different.
Having their business transparent makes sense but by restricting people's personal lives like this would disincentivize good people from rising to power, which is not what we want.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
>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?
I get the impression that you have (or claim to have) information that isn't publicly available and think he is disingenuous or imormal as a person.
Do you also disagree with the causes he is promoting or only the person and/or methods?
Some of his ideas, like full anarcho capitalism, I would need to be convinced before being onboard with. But opposing mass surveillance and promoting government accountability seems odd to vigorously oppose.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 and need to be called out for it.
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.
This is an unequivocally reasonable approach. The prohibition of cannabis is a grotesque charade.
Danes.
People overdose on legal stimulants and drugs all the time (caffeine, alcohol, OTC drugs...).
Nothing points to THC being at all worse than many other legal stimulants.
Probably best thing that can happen to your country.
Edit: On a more bright side - at what point does the game of criminals masquerading as activists / journalists come to end. I remember listening to Flock founder say entire LA's or SF's police was being run by criminal gang. Reading some of the extremist comments here it seems the gangs made their way here too, trying to manipulate people.
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.
Some of us prefer not to give up on that though.
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.
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".
The intent and context are obviously better for the one who's clearly sending the "threat" as a political statement against selective enforcement.
> 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
... and you're willing to give the benefit of doubt to those with power here. You are aware you're making that implicit statement, right?
But, yeah, depending on your threat matrix, you might want to consider hidden trail cams with their own cell service.
I think this is very irresponsible. What would happen if the owner was armed and harmed the police thinking that they were criminals?
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.
Weapons are normal here too.
Might as well talk about unicorns as we are imaging this scenario in Denmark.
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.
A hefty prison sentence for illegal handling of firearms and attempted homicide would be my guess.
The entire scene is probably not meant as effective policing, but as punitive theater. This also explains why they disabled the cameras, as the theater was not intended for content reuse.
Given that, I'd assume they knew he wouldn't shoot them or do anything even remotely like that.
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.
So, success?
Sorry, you made a silly typo that made you look bad. I fixed it.
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.
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.
She currently lives at a secret address due to security concerns.
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.
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.
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?
Do you also disagree with the causes he is promoting or only the person and/or methods?
Some of his ideas, like full anarcho capitalism, I would need to be convinced before being onboard with. But opposing mass surveillance and promoting government accountability seems odd to vigorously oppose.
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”.
Are the homes of Danish prime ministers secret?
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.
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.