Danish privacy activist Lars Andersen raided by police
https://twitter.com/LarsAnders1620/status/2068208864747540516#m
I_am_tiberius · 17 days ago
https://xcancel.com/LarsAnders1620/status/206820886474754051...
19 comments
https://twitter.com/LarsAnders1620/status/2068208864747540516#m
I_am_tiberius · 17 days ago
https://xcancel.com/LarsAnders1620/status/206820886474754051...
19 comments
zazazache · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days ago
Next step would be to cut the cells too.
iamnothere · 16 days ago
Trail cams (and other hidden cams) often have local SD backup. Better break out the “broom,” rip open the walls, and steal every electronic device just in case.
teiferer · 16 days ago
Hm what if he burries some storage server (with UPS) in the yard to which this is streamed. They are never going to find it. Especially if the networking is wireless, but even tracking down where ethernet (copper or fiber) goes is hard.
bawolff · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days ago
Just because you disagree with someone does not make it ok to dox them.
sucrosesucrose · 17 days ago
The lifes of powerful people must be transparent.
lemagedurage · 16 days ago
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.
kachnuv_ocasek · 16 days ago
Good, I don't want people rising to unlimited, uncheckable power and creating oppressive hierarchies in general.
bawolff · 16 days ago
It won't prevent bad people from rising to power. After all, i'm pretty sure Putin doesn't have this problem. He just throws people who do this sort of thing out the window. The only politicians that have something to fear from this type of activism is the non evil ones.
sucrosesucrose · 16 days ago
People that want to be powerful for personal gain will be filtered. People that legimitely want to give their all for their country will be encouraged.
hdgvhicv · 16 days ago
The most powerful people are those who are billionaires
my-next-account · 17 days ago
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.
bawolff · 16 days ago
> That's a bit simplified, isn't it?
No, i dont think it is.
> He's pointing out precisely that "doxing" the entire population of Denmark shouldn't be acceptable to her
Denmark is a democracy, that is a decision for the electroate to make during an election. In general we give governments rights and abilities that normal people do not have. Where the line should be is up to the voters to decide.
> and that she's literally not accepting herself being "doxxed."
Not really equivalent. I'm pretty sure the Danish survelience plans, whatever you think of them, intend to have some sort of controls against misuse. (Im not saying that makes them good or ok, just that they aren't equivalent to doxing people)
SukadarBukadar · 16 days ago
Is it "just disagreeing with them" or is it taking away privacy _from those publicly renouncing the right to privacy_, with goal of protecting the right to privacy of everyone else, who didn't renounce it, by pointing out the hipocrisy and that it actually is important, even to those who claim otherwise trying to take it from others?
spacedoutman · 16 days ago
Actually it does, and much more.
internet_points · 16 days 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.
inigyou · 16 days ago
This politician dropping out of politics would be a good thing? That's the point?
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
> If your morals consist of eye-for-an-eye retribution
It’s still preferable to doing nothing when that politician is publicly declaring their support of indiscriminately violating inherent personal freedoms on an unlimited scale.
selcuka · 17 days 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.
lemagedurage · 16 days ago
Both sides are not looking too pretty here.
bawolff · 16 days 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.
spragl · 16 days 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).
selcuka · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days ago
I was thinking of the police officers. Why risk your life for such a petty crime?
breppp · 17 days ago
I think the gun proliferation situation in Denmark is probably different than the US
klustregrif · 17 days ago
This is Denmark not America, there is literally no risk to their life.
JuniperMesos · 16 days ago
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.
msh · 16 days ago
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).
stefanfisk · 16 days ago
Do you have any danish stats to back up your claim?
stefanfisk · 16 days ago
That’s such an American mentality. Here’s a short clip which might broaden your mind on possible ways to view how and when police should be using violence.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/1c0e24s/american_...
fwn · 16 days ago
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.
jopsen · 16 days 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 · 17 days ago
This is Denmark, nobody except gang members is armed
sgt · 17 days ago
Well, and the police.
div · 16 days ago
Yes, gang members.
seb1204 · 16 days ago
Rofl
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
There are supposedly ~10 civilian owned firearms per 100 people in Denmark. I doubt there are that many gang members there?
orbital-decay · 17 days ago
This is a very... US comment to make.
impossiblefork · 17 days ago
Yes and no.
Weapons are normal here too.
stefanfisk · 16 days ago
Shooting intruders isn’t though. They’d basically have to attack you first for lethal force to be legal.
MemoryHoleHQ · 16 days ago
If a masked person, that doesn't first identify themselves clearly as the police (which is difficult since, well, they are masked) breaks into my house, that's a lethal attack for sure.
What are you going to do after they enter the house (if they aren't indeed the police and you trust they won't kill or rape your family)?
impossiblefork · 16 days ago
This is not the law here in Sweden, at least.
We don't have precedent in the way that common law countries do, and the judgements in actual cases point in slightly different directions-- in one case a court felt that the failure to fire a warning shot made it not self-defence, in another fighting people trying to get into an apartment with a knife was deemed acceptable.
Generally though, if someone is breaking into your apartment while you're there, possibly trying to get at you, there's no limit, as long as you're actually trying to defend yourself (so no executing someone who you've clearly disabled, etc.).
If people are breaking into your apartment and you fire a warning shot, then proceed to shoot the attackers, no one will complain.
stefanfisk · 16 days ago
I am Swedish, and it’s very true that ”it depends”.
This guy for example was convicted of murder because he got his gun out without even trying to contact the police directly or indirectly. So even if he pulled the trigger under reasonable circumstances (a know violent offender was trying to take his rifle) he was found guilty because he should not have gone for the gun without considering alternatives like locking the door or fleeing.
I can’t see him being anywhere near guaranteed to claim self defense even if he had fired a warning shot first.
https://svenskjakt.se/start/nyhet/skot-inkraktare-med-algstu...
impossiblefork · 16 days ago
Yes. I am Swedish too.
Notice again the lack of warning shots. The courts really want you to do one.
l23k4 · 16 days ago
> They’d basically have to attack you first for lethal force to be legal.
They just violently entered his home in an effort to attack him, dressed in a way designed to intimidate. These cops were deliberately cosplaying as some sort of a hit squad, they obviously wanted him to believe that they were going to kill him.
It's not like the cops just accidentally went out dressed like that.
stefanfisk · 16 days ago
This is Denmark, not some Brasilian favela. That type of violent crime extremely rare in Scandinavia. But cops wearing civilian clothes while conducting a raid is fairly normal. Especially when they want to preserve evidence which might be quickly destroyed if the suspect sees them coming.
l23k4 · 16 days ago
> This is Denmark, not some Brasilian favela
Yet they're dressed exactly like a hit squad in a Brazilian favela!
>Especially when they want to preserve evidence which might be quickly destroyed if the suspect sees them coming.
Somehow cops elsewhere manage this just fine in appropriate attire.
stefanfisk · 16 days ago
They're also dressed exactly like a group of random middle aged men.
Naturally, getting raided is scary as fuck. And them being plain clothed certainly doesn't make it less so. But based on the part of the video which he chose to shared I don't see why one would suspect anyone other than the police. Had they been out to kill him it would have been easier to just go in blasting instead of yelling while using a battering ram.
Hit squads are truly exotic here. Plain clothes police raids are not, although the norm is for them to be uniformed. I have no idea on why they chose to be plain clothed instead of uniformed on this occasion, but I can't see why we would attribute it to "cosplaying as some sort of a hit squad". Another possibility, which I believe is somewhat common, is that they can take him away without making him look like a criminal in the eyes of his neighbors.
Where in Europe are you from? I get the impression that you are used to a very different kind of society.
Hikikomori · 16 days ago
How is the first guy in dressed again?
JuniperMesos · 16 days 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.
ktallett · 16 days ago
I would much prefer a society where all homeowners and cops don't carry guns and cops were fired for illegal raids.
LtWorf · 16 days ago
Me too, but I bet the cops did carry.
nxm · 16 days ago
That’s not the real world. Criminals will always find a way to get guns no matter the amount of gun control you impose, so I’d rather have law abiding citizens be armed as well
stavros · 16 days ago
"You can never ban all guns, so don't bother banning any guns. It makes no sense to reduce gun violence if you cannot eliminate it completely."
selcuka · 16 days ago
justinclift · 16 days ago
> Criminals will always find a way to get guns [...]
In that case, how about the cops can just shoot anyone with a gun who's not a cop?
Should keep things pretty simple, and the majority of the population in the US would be a bunch safer. :D
everyday7732 · 16 days ago
It is the real world in many places. "Criminals" are not a homogenous group. Petty criminals will not usually be making the effort to get a gun if getting a gun is inconvenient. Some high level criminals will find ways to get guns but the number of criminals with guns will be much lower with gun controls.
inigyou · 16 days ago
Also if getting a gun is dangerous. Why escalate a petty theft into a murder?
noir_lord · 16 days ago
It’s not your real world, lots of other countries have so little gun violence that a shooting makes the national news when it happens and thats maybe once or twice a year.
the_doctah · 16 days ago
It must be nice getting to live in an area that doesn't have entire subcultures dedicated to guns and crime.
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
There are countries in the EU which have pretty lax gun laws and firefighters are fairly accessible they still have fairly low levels of gun crime. Just having access to weapons doesn’t mean that people will start killing each other for no reason, there are many other more important factors.
ktallett · 16 days ago
I'd say there is no country in the world that proves this point of view is a success in any metric.
burnt-resistor · 16 days ago
Some people want world peace and denuclearization. Each country is currently as it finds itself and takes a great deal of leadership and buy-in to change.
joxdosba · 16 days ago
> cops were fired for illegal raids.
This kind of pro-cop propaganda placing them above the law is disgusting.
Cops should go to prison for illegal raids. Some behaviour needs to be severely punished.
This kind of betrayal of trust is one of the most severe crimes one can commit against society, the punishments should be equally severe.
93po · 16 days ago
My thought on this is that it's basically not legal to protect your home/family with force because of this. It's impossible to know if someone breaking in is a cop or not, and at 3AM with glass breaking and a group of people claiming to be cops, but aren't, how are you supposed to know? You basically never can. So either you risk going to prison for the rest of your life when it's actually a cop, or you do absolutely nothing and let your family get harmed/your home burgled.
koonsolo · 16 days ago
No it is not. Europeans can have guns, and there was a recent case in Belgium where such a thing happened.
Jolter · 16 days ago
I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to use your legal firearms against people in Denmark. Even in a home intrusion event.
l23k4 · 16 days ago
In the EU the answer is always "it's unclear". Yes you can, but you also can't.
ECHR necessarily guarantees the right to shoot some intruders in some situations, but it's kind of impossible to know which situations those are except after the fact.
mortarion · 16 days ago
You can if there's a direct threat to your life (i.e. you can see that the intruder is also armed).
But you can't use it against someone for just entering your premises illegally. It needs to be a clear and present danger.
jopsen · 16 days ago
Not if you can back away
koonsolo · 16 days ago
So yes if you can't back away.
Sammi · 16 days ago
This was in Denmark
varjag · 16 days ago
You can own guns in Denmark as well.
Sammi · 9 days ago
"can" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
seb1204 · 16 days ago
I'd say it is. Yes there are people that own guns or hunting rifles. Most still don't think about guns or shooting first. Guns are supposed to be locked in a safe etc. All that does obviously not apply to a criminal who does not follow the law.
koonsolo · 16 days ago
> Most still don't think about guns or shooting first.
You base this on what? I know plenty of gun owners where I live, and most would pull open their safe the moment they hear something during the night. I'm willing to bet most gun safes are located in the bedroom.
l23k4 · 16 days 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.
tmtvl · 16 days ago
Really? 'Oh, someone I don't know! stab'? What if the person is plain-clothes law enforcement? Or a special needs person who somehow managed to wander into the wrong house? Or your sibling's new partner they want to introduce to you?
Anyway, unless you actually have stabbed someone before you don't know whether you got what it takes until you're actually in a situation where you find out.
selcuka · 16 days ago
They broke down the door.
l23k4 · 15 days ago
>Anyway, unless you actually have stabbed someone before you don't know whether you got what it takes until you're actually in a situation where you find out.
A guy tried to rob me, I fractured his skull with my iphone before I even realized what was going on. You don't just freeze when someone suddenly attacks you, you'll try to swing at them with whatever you have at hand.
At home? I might just have been cooking, or carving a sunday roast. Who knows? But if someone suddenly smashed through my door, I'm pretty sure that whatever object happens to be in my hand would be heading towards the intruder long before I've had time to think about what's going on.
edelbitter · 16 days 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...
selcuka · 16 days 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.
tchalla · 17 days ago
> What would happen if the owner was armed
Might as well talk about unicorns as we are imaging this scenario in Denmark.
messe · 17 days 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.
herbstein · 16 days ago
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
msh · 16 days ago
It would still (in most cases, your response have to be proportional to the threat) be a crime to use them against a intruder.
tchalla · 16 days ago
You should also add that most private guns owned in Denmark are typically for hunting, not self defence.
jakkos · 16 days 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_smith · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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.
protocolture · 17 days ago
Correct
teiferer · 17 days 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".
spwa4 · 16 days ago
It's obfuscation because you're leaving out that this is an openly political fight of an in-power leftist politician against an "extreme-right" party (of course, they're well to the left of the US democrat party).
The underlying problem is that a LOT of public servants are very scared what will happen if the party who keeps getting threatened gets elected, which is a real possibility. So, they're using all sorts of underhanded tactics to try to prevent it. In a way, it's a fight about public servants trying to keep their job safe. It's political because they all owe their jobs to a particular coalition that's been in power for ages and ages.
Oh and it's a fight about muslim immigration and the influence of that in and on society. So ...
That's why it's obfuscation. You're leaving important things out.
vintermann · 17 days ago
> what was the intent, what was context.
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?
bawolff · 16 days ago
> The intent and context are obviously better for the one who's clearly sending the "threat" as a political statement against selective enforcement.
That is far from obvious.
In general i think that attempting to alter the course of justice via a threat is much worse than a simple threat. Any situation where officers of the court are afraid to impartially do their duties to coercion is a fundamental threat to society and should be dealt with harshly.
> ... and you're willing to give the benefit of doubt to those with power here.
I'm basing my view on the arguments presented in this thread.
So far what has been presented is that the prosecutor did something very normal that happens all the time for very reasonable reasons. Its possible that in this case it happened due to inappropriate reasons, idk, but so far nobody has even presented a theory for why the action was corrupt instead of normal.
In general i think it is the job of the person arguing that misconduct occured to present evidence that it actually happened. Otherwise things descend into witch hunts as it is very difficult to prove a negative.
arjie · 16 days 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.
sword_smith · 16 days ago
"anarcho-tyranny"
wickedsickeune · 16 days 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.
egorfine · 16 days ago
> exposing the hypocrisy of the Danish government
Does that change anything?
righthand · 16 days 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.
egorfine · 16 days ago
> possibly inform
I'm not sure about that. People on HN are generally well in the know, while laymen don't event understand the substance of the matter in question.
b40d-48b2-979e · 16 days ago
People on HN are generally well in the know
righthand · 16 days ago
I imagine Lars reaches beyond HN to other uninformed circles. HN doesn't have users representing every social group out there in the world.
alper · 16 days 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".
Quothling · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days ago
What kind of history will a totalitarian prison planet write, I wonder.
N_Lens · 16 days ago
1984 will be banned as being too inspirational, perhaps?
KSteffensen · 16 days ago
1984 is not inspirational, it's cautionary. The main character has already lost from the first page of the book.
chopin · 16 days ago
I tend to disagree. 1984 seems the playbook for the majority of politicians. For them, it's inspirational.
pluralmonad · 16 days ago
Maybe we should begin asking, "whose children, specifically?"
xiphias2 · 17 days 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 · 16 days 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_octet · 16 days 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.
megous · 16 days ago
So prosecute them for those other things, no? Instead of helping criminals grow their business by banning non-harmful stuff and giving them monetary growth opprotunities.
angry_octet · 16 days ago
Crime benefits from network effects even more than regular businesses, you have to attack them via every opportunity.
However you are putting words in my mouth, in a typical American style of prosecution-->banning. It is quite possible to legalise and regulate marijuana. American halfway legalisation creates an industry which funds OC and can't be prosecuted. Canadian legalisation creates a revenue source for the provincial governments while providing vertical integration and control, and the volume of illegal weed has plummeted.
gaiagraphia · 16 days 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.
pluralmonad · 16 days ago
Why fuss over "unregulated" chemists when the vast majority of harms come directly from officially licensed and regulated industry? I don't think cannabis dealers have ever poisoned entire towns or ecosystems. The facade of regulated safety must be more important.
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
Why fuss over anyone committing lesser harm when there is something worse happening somewhere else?
pluralmonad · 16 days ago
It's not whataboutism. It's poking at the idea that "regulation" doesn't enshrine and enable harms. But by all means, inject lawyers into all aspects of human life. That will surely improve things.
gaiagraphia · 15 days ago
When I go to a bar, I appreciate not having to order 'one alcohol, please', and getting a clear bottle of odourless mystery liquid.
I don't have time to be an expert in every subject. I appreciate using the collective power of society to put stamps of approval on things, so I can use language with an element of trust.
If I want to smoke, I want to know what I'm smoking, and don't want to waste time trying to work out the exact chemical composition. I'm not sure why anybody wouldn't want that control over their bodies.
I quite like the idea of words actually having meanings which are enforced, and not being vague concepts coined on the street by people who don't have me or my community at heart.
pembrook · 16 days 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.
Quothling · 16 days 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.
pembrook · 16 days ago
I think you and I disagree. I don’t think Jesper is focused on the right issues.
Big tech (private companies who largely just care about profits) and foreign governments (the Americans for example), are way lower on my “things Europe should be worried” about list. They’re there of course, but lower.
Private companies don’t have the ability to ruin your life in the same way your own government does. They just want your money. And the US government is truly a disinterested party. 99% of Americans couldn’t place Denmark on a map (I’m not kidding). When push comes to shove, they fundamentally do not care what happens here.
The real threat is our own governments, who we have given the legal authority to enact all the negative outcomes that will come from totalitarian erosions of privacy and over regulation of individuals. Building up this scary “foreign boogieman” and stoking this moral panic is what is enabling the authoritarian action.
Pointing fingers at Big Tech and the US is a giant distraction tactic so you don’t look at the terrible things our own domestic politicians have done and the fact they have zero plans to do the hard things needed to get us out of this mess. It's just champagne and smiling over dinner, while the old eat the young, the government eats the private sector, and endless legislation eats away your opportunity to do anything more exciting than build powerpoints at a braindead consulting firm.
yorwba · 16 days ago
If you think that Jesper isn't attacking the right issues, but Lars does, then you should definitely hope that Lars switches to Jesper's more popular approach.
Unless you think there can never be a democratic consensus in favor of privacy, therefore the only way is for a small vanguard of privacy activists to impose their will on the hostile majority and establish a totalitarian privacy dictatorship. Then it wouldn't matter so much whether you look good in the court of popular opinion or not.
megous · 16 days ago
You're turning things on their heads. Currently there's some modicum of privacy. Politicians are trying to force removal of this on everyone.
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
You can not “democratically” decide to abolish certain inalienable personal liberties and still pretend you are a democracy. That’s just mob rule or worse.
> totalitarian privacy dictatorship
That’s an illogical concept. What does that even mean?
Lutger · 16 days ago
> Private companies don’t have the ability to ruin your life in the same way your own government does. They just want your money.
And what happens when your money is gone? What happens when the government has no money anymore because the super rich took it all? Your life turns to shit real fast when you can't afford housing, healthcare and food.
I get when you are in an authoritarian country, or one on the path to becoming so like the US, that the government looks to be the most dangerous actor. But in the west that is still free, its the corps that I worry about the most.
andsoitis · 16 days ago
Private companies want your money but they don’t take it. You give it to them in exchange for something.
gaiagraphia · 16 days ago
It feels like I'm force to pay tax which then evaporates into the pockets of private companies like Palantir, though... I mean, you arguably can't even fully participate in the society you pay taxes to help run if you don't have a Google or Apple spycube.
andsoitis · 16 days ago
That's the government taking your money and deciding how to apply it. It isn't a private company taking your money.
Lutger · 13 days ago
That's the worst thing. You need to take a job to have money. You need to buy food to eat, pay housing, clothing, insurance, etc. Yet you don't get to determine these prices. The 'free market' story is just a way to make it look like being poor is your own choice, because you agreed to these transactions. You are just being gaslit into blaming yourself for your conditions, while the rich extract every last penny out of society without even working for it.
pembrook · 16 days ago
You’re fundamentally worried about the wrong thing.
It’s an extremely common bias on the left just as the anti-government bias on the right.
Both public and private entities are capable of abusing power.
Only one group however is legally entitled to take 50% of your money regardless of the quality of their product, by holding a gun to your head. They can even take more via the phantom tax of inflation using deficit spending (as is happening now all over Europe). This group is the one you should fear more if looking at it from first principles.
The current runaway deficits across Europe and rising political unrest prove this.
The only thing companies can do to “take” your money is offer you a service that’s better than all alternatives that you chose to buy voluntarily.
If you think that’s the bigger authoritarian risk something is wrong with your mental model of how the world works.
Lutger · 13 days ago
I have a different mental model because I live in a high trust society. Well, at least higher than the US. In my model, the government is basically a virtual contract between all people to take care of each other. One side of the bargain is tax and following the law, the other is what you should get out of it: protection against criminals (police) and hostile countries (defense), universal healthcare, education, roads and stuff, consumer rights, the rule of law, etc.
I think that is a pretty good deal and I see no inherent reason for why 'the gov is out there to steal from us' (makes no sense), because it basically IS us. Corps on the other hand, they are explicitly there to get your money.
So in my model the only reason the government is bad is because it is influenced by corporations (and because people vote for rightwing parties), and the only reason corporations are good is because the government makes them so. This is a bit black and white to make it very explicit, but basically that is the idea.
And there are some flaws here of course and a lot of nuances, but I don't think this is wrong or biased at all. In fact, I think everybody else is wrong or biased and am ready to argue why, but that should come at no surprise.
pembrook · 11 days ago
I appreciate you articulating your views wholly. I also live in a high trust society (Finland).
I would categorize your position as the textbook left-leaning bias (Government good, corporation bad), and fundamentally incorrect. But NOT because I'm on the opposite side.
I believe the only rational position to take is the center (ie. "things are complicated" and "incentives rule all").
There are huge holes in your logic:
1) The default state of humanity is not utopian prosperity. The default state is starving naked in the dirt. So where does the tax money the collective uses to "take care of each other" come from? Why are only the rich countries providing good benefits...and how did they get rich in the first place?
2) If one is being honest in their analysis, enterprises competing to create surplus value is the only reason your government is able to get the tax revenue to provide you with anything. Otherwise you're just redistributing dirt among naked people.
3) You've ignored the existence of incentives. Your view rests on the fallacy humans in government are a different species than the humans in private companies and will act more selflessly. This is provably false. 99.99% of government workers have zero exposure to the accountability of elections, have no competitive pressures, no fear of losing their job, and thus do not make things better or innovate. People in private companies on the other hand have all those incentives.
4) Historically, whenever we give a society over wholly to government, it has resulted in disaster and human tragedy on a mass scale every single time. If government is fundamentally good, why aren't wholly government-driven societies better? How come when China privatized and reduced its percentage of government driven economy from 90% to 30% (where they sit today), it made everyone more prosperous by a factor of 100x?
5) Current trendlines all indicate the "High trust European socialism" model is in slow collapse across Europe. Like the USSR (you could call it USSR-light given EU average has now reached 55% government driven economy), they stopped innovating and are losing the private industry surplus to tax and redistribute. Germany, UK, France, Finland (my country) etc. are all in deep shit right now.
6) Cooperatives are legal in basically all developed countries. If the collectivist model drove more value for people, how come cooperatives don't dominate all sectors of the economy?
mistrial9 · 16 days ago
> 99% of Americans couldn’t place Denmark on a map (I’m not kidding)
sixty one percent of statistics are fabricated on the spot?
xorcist · 12 days ago
How can someone say that with a straight face, when the last two decades has been a constant demonstration of the opposite?
Since the Rohingya genocide we can no longer pretend that Big Tech is apolitical.
Private interest now owns not only your personal life and all your interaction with society and is completely necessary at every step for upbringing children but they also influence elections, not only in authoritarian regimes but also in what we used to think of as liberal democracies.
A select few, not limited to Thiel and Musk, clearly wielded some form of control over the world's biggest economic and military power. Not only classical political questions such as taxation but also including influence over paramilitary powers. That influence only came to a halt when it came to what to do about the Middle East.
The political idea that governments are more important powers than private organizations haven't been based in any real world experience for the past almost three decades now.
Folcon · 16 days ago
Out of curiosity, what is Jesper's strategy?
> He's been campaigning against big tech in our schools for like a decade
> 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.
dmurray · 16 days 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.
pembrook · 16 days ago
Will the police intervene and arrest the ministers when the laws the ministers are enacting result in the same outcome for me?
mistrial9 · 16 days ago
never - the courts must make decisions
pluralmonad · 16 days ago
Of course not. There is paperwork and letterhead involved so it is legitimate.
gaiagraphia · 16 days ago
The police definitely need to intervene, but I'd like to think that playing tit-for-tat with the government is a valid protest, and that this won't result in a loss of freedom.
I guess they need to ascertain whether he's operating organically, or at the behest of another nation, and whether he's scouting out ministers for something bigger in the future.
Though, the irony in all this, is that it all could've been avoided if the government weren't acting at the behest of another nation, and scouting out what they can get away with on their authoritarian warpath. Maybe the police are arresting the wrong people.
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
By the same standard it would be reasonable to intervene when politicians are indiscriminately interfering with personal communications devices of everyone without any judicial oversight?
monegator · 16 days ago
> He goes way too far though
that's what activist have to do to shake people
raverbashing · 16 days ago
[flagged]
elsjaako · 16 days ago
I don't know about this case, so I can only speak in general.
A lot of times people that say this don't make a strong case that some theoretical more moderate protest would be effective. There is just a feeling that if they personally feel offended by the actions of the protester then it's probably a bad thing.
In reality it's often more complicated. I know some people that are involved with controversial protests, and the effectiveness of their actions is definitely something they think about. It can't be too extreme, that will put people off like you say. But often there is conversations like in this thread, "this protester goes too far, but they do have a point". This moves the Overton window in the desired direction.
The goal isn't too make you like the protester, it's to make you think about the issues.
raverbashing · 16 days ago
Yes I totally agree, and there are nuances and details
But it's easy to push to one side or another
kakacik · 16 days 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.
close04 · 16 days ago
> crazy man's personal vendetta. Who can vouch he won't go further and ie won't kidnap a kid to achieve his goals.
You just committed exactly the kind of escalation that you condemn when it's about him.
So what if someone can vouch for him? What's that worth? "Vouching" is worthless in any circumstance I can think of, and nobody can give you guarantees about anything. I can't vouch that you won't do exactly the same, or that you weren't the masked police who raced to the breakers so he's not filmed while breaking the law (innocent people have nothing to hide, right?), or that you're not one of the politicians pushing for oppressive laws for your personal benefit.
kakacik · 16 days ago
Jeez, you grabbed a single word from an expression that even non-native speakers like me know very well how to interpret and went a bit too deep into your self-made projections and on-purpose incorrect interpretations.
Just to be clear - there is no actual vouching, there never was, nor any plans for that. Fanatics are unpredictable, it doesn't matter in which area, their decisions are primarily emotional. He certainly behaved as one. Rest are details.
Or do you consider family stalking as a correct sane approach that actually achieves the goal effectively?
Gareth321 · 16 days 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."
Jweb_Guru · 16 days 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.
Most people aren't this particular brand of irrational.
sojournerc · 16 days ago
Ghandi once said during a visit to the west, "I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians". It is not irrational to question movements you might nominally agree with but that manifest in immoral or inconsistent ways.
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
You do have a valid point but mildly “hurting” (or rather inconveniencing) the justice minister of Denmark out of all places seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I mean he’s hellbent on using 1984 as a guidebook and forcing it on everyone in the EU.
bawolff · 16 days 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.
calgoo · 16 days ago
The difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is a matter of which side of the fence you stand on. They are basically the same thing, especially these days when you get marked as terrorist for talking bad about the people in power.
JumpCrisscross · 16 days ago
> difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is a matter of which side of the fence
Oft repeated but untrue. Terrorism, empirically, doesn’t work. Non-violent protest, and armed insurrection (aimed at the state, not its population) do. Sometimes freedom fighters can benefit from terrorism. But they are distinct strategies with separate targets.
Mainan_Tagonist · 16 days ago
And freedom fighters are supposed to actually care about "freedom" while terrorists generally do not. I fail to see what great advancements in freedom for anyone involved have come out of the terror attacks performed over the past 25 years.
deanishe · 16 days ago
Islamists fight to be the oppressors, not to help the oppressed.
JumpCrisscross · 16 days ago
> Islamists fight to be the oppressors
Eh, the history of Islamism comes out of rebelling against secular dictators who had a habit of imprisoning their thought leaders.
Mainan_Tagonist · 16 days ago
or put simply, just rebelling against any attempt at modernising muslim societies. Anwar Sadat comes to mind.
b40d-48b2-979e · 16 days ago
25 years? Why stop there? How about the US terror attacks on other countries civilians since at least the 1960s?
Mainan_Tagonist · 16 days ago
Yeah... what about those?
How many retaliatory terror attacks on americans performed by citizen of those countries?
What point are you trying to make? US bad? Anything more thoughtful to offer?
The US are an empire and they have behaved as an empire over the last 70 years (bombing, overthrowing governments, supporting dictators). By historical standard, they have proved less coercive than empires of proportionally comparable reach. Think of the Mongols, the Assyrians, the Japanese...
Jensson · 16 days ago
When did USA bomb a civilian house that wasn't a part of a larger operation? Terrorist attacks only target civilians, I have never seen such an attack by USA. They always try to target military or leaders.
The last time I know USA did a terror attack was japan in ww2, but everyone did terror bombing during that war, and the first world stopped doing terror bombings since then. If USA still ran that doctrine you would have Tehran and the rest of major Iranian cities leveled to the ground now, that is what it looks like when the strongest military in the world perform terror attacks.
b40d-48b2-979e · 16 days ago
If you ignore our proxies. Or are Israel's attacks destroying the hospitals and apartment buildings in Gaza and Lebanon "part of a larger operation"?
I guess it's okay we napalmed Vietnam and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians because it was "part of a larger operation"?
American Exceptionalism is a disease.
tremon · 15 days ago
Are you sure your name isn't Jingo?
> When did USA bomb a civilian house that wasn't a part of a larger operation
Why does that matter? The attacks on the Twin Towers were also part of a larger operation, does that excuse the attacks in any way?
> Terrorist attacks only target civilians
Nope, terrorism can include literally anything when Power deems it convenient.
https://stratnewsglobal.com/europe/united-kingdom/uk-charges... : British MPs on Wednesday voted to declare pro-Palestinian group Palestine Action a terrorist organisation, after its activists broke into a military base and damaged two aircraft
> I have never seen such an attack by USA
That may very well be true, but the world is a lot bigger than what your eyes can capture. "I don't see it, therefore it doesn't exist" is a state of mind that most people grow out of around the age of 8 months.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre : When the soldiers got to the village, they did not find any NLF troops. Despite this, many soldiers began to kill the villagers, mainly elderly people, women, and children
> [the USA] always try to target military or leaders
Bless your heart.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/02/politics/timeline-us-strikes-... : The US military has killed at least 207 people in strikes that have destroyed 66 vessels
> The last time I know USA did a terror attack was japan in ww2
Yet another example of "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/24/worlddispatch.... : To some in the Arab and Muslim countries, Shock and Awe is terrorism by another name; to others, a crime that compares unfavourably with September 11
> the first world stopped doing terror bombings since then
Nixon and Kissinger were not part of the first world, then?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu : Apart from the large human toll, perhaps the most powerful and direct impact of the bombing was the political backlash it caused [..] The U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia was partly responsible for the rise of what had been a small-scale Khmer Rouge insurgency, which now grew capable of overthrowing the Lon Nol government
Nixon decided to keep the bombing a secret from the American people as to admit to bombing an officially neutral nation would damage his credibility
> that is what it looks like when the strongest military in the world perform terror attacks
We know perfectly well what it looks like: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/12/22/2025-in-gaza-12...
pepperoni_pizza · 16 days ago
Terrorism very much does work. The Basque and the Northern Irish terrorists / freedom fighters have gotten a so many of their demands for autonomy met that they disbanded (in one case formally, in the other almost) because they weren't needed anymore. Taliban also got the US out from Afghanistan pretty handily with mostly terrorism.
some_random · 16 days ago
The Taliban absolutely did not terrorism the US out of Afghanistan haha
pepperoni_pizza · 16 days ago
Why do you think they left, then?
s1artibartfast · 16 days ago
Because it was expensive and the local population did not care for the Kabul government we were protecting. It is hard to prop an unpopular government in a country of 40 million.
The US military was averaging only 12 deaths in the years before withdraw.
Most of what the taliban was doing is closer to asymmetric warfare than terrorism.
calgoo · 16 days ago
When the population was complaining that they had to go to the Taliban for help because the Americans could do nothing to help them when the local military was corrupt and abused the people.
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
> The Basque and the Northern Irish terrorists / freedom fighters have gotten a so many of their demands for autonomy met that they disbanded
That’s certainly not how it works.
They just became highly unpopular amongst the populations they were trying to liberate (which generally preferred more peaceful solutions) and lost their support base and had to disband.
catlifeonmars · 16 days ago
Terrorist is often a term used to describe freedom fighters, in order to delegitimize them. Basically this is such a common tactic that it is unsurprising that the two are sometimes conflated.
JumpCrisscross · 16 days ago
> Terrorist is often a term used to describe freedom fighters
Do you have an historical example?
bawolff · 16 days ago
Basically all of history. Terrorist is a term people use for people who use violence and intimidation to attempt to cause political change. Freedom fighter is a term used for people who use violence and intimidation to attempt to cause political change that you are sympathetic to.
Both words have identical meanings, the only difference is if you happen to agree with the people commiting the violent acts or not.
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
No, not at all. Methods and targets/victims also matter. Using violence to achieve specific military objectives or as a response to violence is not the same as indiscriminate murder and terrorism.
bawolff · 16 days ago
> as a response to violence
Literally every terrorist group ever claims they are responding to some sort of violence or oppression.
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
So what? It what they are actually doing that matters.
JumpCrisscross · 16 days ago
> Both words have identical meanings
Only online. The Viet Cong weren’t targeting civilians. They hit American soldiers. Targeting military and narrow political power are the hallmark of proper rebellions. Targeting civilians is how terrorism works.
The closest analog to terrorism in warfare is actually strategic air campaigns. Dresden and the London Blitz are closer to terrorism than e.g. the uprising in Bangladesh or even the Taliban toppling the Karzai regime. And lo and behold, strategic air campaigns have a history of uniting the enemy much more than undoing them.
bawolff · 16 days ago
Generally speaking, people do not use the word terrorism or freedom fighter to describe the actions of a state actor during open war.
JumpCrisscross · 16 days ago
> people do not use the word terrorism or freedom fighter to describe the actions of a state actor during open war
People also don’t use the term to relate to rebellions. It’s more an internet meme or cases where like a few people call e.g. Russia a terrorist state by analogy. Freedom fighters fighting rebellion tend to work to keep civilians on their side. When they don’t, they become terrorists and tend to lose.
basilikum · 16 days ago
The Taliban's terrorism very much did work.
JumpCrisscross · 16 days ago
Not really. The Taliban’s attacks on civilians didn’t help their cause. They found success when they started acting as a more-competent government than our fucks in Kabul. If we want to debate whether the Taliban under occupation had any success with its terrorist tactics, I guess I’d concede that one man’s terrorist is another’s guerrilla fighter. But even then, guerilla tactics rely on a sympathetic local population. So a guerrilla team bombing civilians is undermining its own cause.
basilikum · 16 days ago
I'm not exactly an expert on Afghan politics and the reason for the failure of the western backed government are surely multifaceted, but don't you think that destabilizing the country through terror attacks played a role in the sustained weakness of the government as well as the withdrawal of the West?
JumpCrisscross · 16 days ago
> don't you think that destabilizing the country through terror attacks played a role in the sustained weakness of the government as well as the withdrawal of the West?
Not an expert either. I haven’t seen one make this case. What I have seen is cross-conflict studies on the success of terrorism, and that sets my baseline for Afghanistan being a special case. (Domestic terrorism works a little bit more frequently than international terrorism. But they’re both very, very bad strategies that frequently blow back.)
bawolff · 15 days ago
> The Taliban’s attacks on civilians didn’t help their cause
Umm, do you mean al-qaeda (if you are referring to 9/11). Al-qaeda and the Taliban are different groups. Neither are particularly nice, but only one did 9/11.
xorcist · 12 days ago
> Terrorism, empirically, doesn’t work
In the context of 9/11, that seems like a strong statement to make.
The terrorists (let us agree on this label a priori) got everything they could ever wish for and then some.
Regular Americans in general lost freedoms of movement and communication. The whole political landscape shifted right. The US invaded and destabilized Iraq and Afghanistan. Pakistan and Syria got weaker than ever. The Saudis gained hugely in influence over the whole region.
Wahhabism is now influential in areas where they hardly existed before! They almost controlled Egypt for a while. And when the US retreated and gave controlling power back to the Taliban they showed the whole world that a needle pick in the belly of the beast was all that was necessary. That has given new courage to similar terrorist cells, a situation the rest of the world is still struggling with.
The whole world focused for almost two decades on their part of the world. Nobody can say that 9/11 wasn't an important catalyst for all that. And at a price that would not even cover catering had this been an organized intelligence operation. Terrorism can clearly and empirically be a very cost effective lever in ideological, political and religious struggle.
Mainan_Tagonist · 16 days ago
yet you fail to account for the fact that said people wouldn't wouldn't be in power did terrorism not have occurred in the first place. How many bad leaders in the west resulting directly or indirectly from terror attacks?
klibertp · 16 days ago
About as many as bad terrorist groups that began due to catastrophically bad decisions of leaders in the West. I'm sorry to break it to you - the plural you - but all the terrorists that are not traditionally domestic (local leftist/rightist extremists are everywhere, after all) - and the fact they are against the West - is simply a consequence of Western politics. Imperialism and neocollonialism are real, actual policies, and it doesn't take a genius to realize that. If such policies hit locales where it's not culturally wrong to die for a cause, it's obvious you'll get terrorists after a while. I suspect this was calculated risk until it stopped being that: the locals got their own exploding sticks and decided to use them.
It's so incredibly sad to watch: for decades, tons of people made mostly rational (from their point of view) decisions, yet each step inevitably brought us closer and closer to the current situation. Add a few cultural, social, and personal pathological cases into the mix, and what you have is basically a speedrun to 9/11.
Note that I'm not justifying terror attacks, just saying they are a very predictable consequence of decades of policy-making.
Hikikomori · 16 days ago
Blockback is a "fun" podcast about this.
Mainan_Tagonist · 16 days ago
no, it's nothing specific to "The West" or the decisions it has taken. The typical "They hate us because our bad policies" does not explain why every empire (western or not) has had to contend with dissenters keen on overthrowing its "yoke".
How would the Mongols, the Russians, the Egyptian empires have solved the israeli/palestine conflict? Do you know where the terms zealots and sicario come from? Did the Romans solve these terror attacks by reconsidering their "catastrophically bad policies"?
klibertp · 15 days ago
> The typical "They hate us because our bad policies" does not explain why every empire (western or not) has had to contend with dissenters
It's interesting that you actually wrote down in this sentence the very explanation you say doesn't exist. It's pretty obvious: instituting an empire is the policy others will hate you for. The fact that you can't imagine this despite spelling out the facts yourself is curious.
Not being an empire is an option, too. That won't save you in all cases, especially if you're seen as a fallen empire, another empire's lackey due to alliances and dependencies, or your culture is simply incompatible with some other culture that happens to be frequently in contact with you. But it will reduce the likelihood of a convincing narrative - one that could lead people to hijack planes and fly them into buildings - emerging.
It's not a topic that can be fully discussed in HN comments, as there are many complexities involved, but "They hate us because we decided on a policy to be an empire" is not that far from the truth, I think.
Mainan_Tagonist · 14 days ago
Indeed, empires do not have to exist, and the world could constitute of individual nations ruling themselves independently in democracy peace and happiness.
By historical standard, over the last 10000 years prosperity, democracy and peace have hardly been the norm, don't you think? Empires have existed all over the world however. Perhaps we should accept what is a fact of life of human societies, and try to minimise its most egregious aspects, rather than wishfulling hoping for the profound change that will never materialise.
The pilots who flew planes into buildings 25 years ago were saudis, Saudi Arabia was never part of a western Empire. They trained in Afghanistan which was never part of a western empire (Alexander the Great does not count).
They were able to strike the American empire because, contrary to the common political discourse on the left, the American empire is a rather open and benevolent hegemon by historical standard, and internal dissent is not crushed or exterminated as it would have been were the Americans behaving as the Ottomans, the Romans, the Mongols, the Spanish, USSR etc...
I am not apologizing the American empire, I am not even american nor do I like the culture that spews out of the US, especially these days, but one has to put things into historical context if we are to understand the nature of terror attacks.
klibertp · 14 days ago
> By historical standard, over the last 10000 years prosperity, democracy and peace have hardly been the norm, don't you think?
Agreed! From my own reading (not a specialist), for example, in Europe, there were only a handful of years (literally) between 3000 B.C. and ~1950 A.D. when there was actual peace on the continent. Wars, rebellions, coups, civil wars, uprisings - every single year for five thousand years there was bloodshed, the borders moved, cities perished, populations starved, and so on.
And yes, this happened both when an empire/global power existed and when none was around. And yes, the Pax Romana (and similar periods) did bring many benefits to the world. At the same time, though, all the empires always incited hatred among the groups under them: the Romans bloodily suppressed quite a few uprisings even during that "Golden Age" (which you know, since you mentioned "zealots" in a previous comment). They wouldn't need to do that were they not an empire, which is my point.
> The pilots who flew planes into buildings 25 years ago were saudis, Saudi Arabia was never part of a western Empire. They trained in Afghanistan which was never part of a western empire (Alexander the Great does not count).
The terrorists don't need to be "part of empire" to feel threatened by that empire. Putting soldiers on the ground, for any reason, half a world away, while demanding special treatment for the troops, assuming their country's jurisdiction naturally follows their citizens in other nations, and so on - just one of those is enough to be seen as an imperialist power by the locals. The USA did all of these and more throughout the world, but especially in the Middle East. They didn't have to act that way, but they did, as it's natural for empires. The violent backlash locally and terror attacks at home are just normal, expected reactions to an empire acting like one. It's also worth noting that the entire Middle East is a fallen, fractured Empire. I'm not sure how much that influenced things, but I can imagine it fueled some ambitions in countries like Saudi Arabia to build another Ottoman Empire, this time centered on Riyadh. (Just a guess - I'm not well-versed in post-Middle Age history of the Middle East.)
> They were able to strike the American empire because, contrary to the common political discourse on the left, the American empire is a rather open and benevolent hegemon by historical standard
Agreed. Though I'd say whether an empire is open and benevolent or strict and brutal doesn't influence the number of terrorist attacks. Yes, if you're benevolent, the hatred may be less prevalent - but then your security is weaker, so you can have the same number of attacks even with fewer "freedom fighters". The issue is being seen as an empire: as long as you can be cast as one, some people will hate you automatically, even if, all things considered, you're actually pretty tame and even beneficial to others.
> I am not apologizing the American empire, I am not even american nor do I like the culture that spews out of the US, especially these days, but one has to put things into historical context if we are to understand the nature of terror attacks.
If America is not attacked by terrorists because it is an empire and acts like one - then why? That's what I don't get in your argument. If the USA didn't maintain military presence across the region (ME), didn't wholeheartedly support the "Zionist regime" (which also acts like an ethnocentric empire - Aztecs come to mind as a comparison), didn't historically meddle in the region's politics by both carrot and a lot of stick, etc., would they be hated enough for people to suicide bomb them?
Apparently, 90% of the terror attacks happen in the context of local instability (a civil war, rebellion, uprising, coup, etc.). You really need something special for the foreign terrorists to be willing to travel half a world just to blow themselves up on your doorstep. If it's not the imperialist policies, then what is it? If I understand your argument correctly, it's all religious fanaticism? But then, why would those fanatics attack the US, instead of enjoying some jolly sectarian bloodshed locally, like they did for centuries? There are enough religions and sects in ME to fuel terror attacks for a few more millennia, I'd guess, and it's not like that infighting stopped completely. How come the US was added as another traditional target for "death to ..." calls? I don't think it would happen without America's heavy involvement there...
Mainan_Tagonist · 14 days ago
"You really need something special for the foreign terrorists to be willing to travel half a world just to blow themselves up on your doorstep"
Yes, and what could be that something special?
Imperialism says you? Britain and France have been struck by terrorism yet they no longer have an empire. Ok, guilt by association could be a motive... But then why would Belgium and Germany be struck? oh, and Sweden too? And all these kidnapped christian girls in Nigeria? and in every case by Sunni-Muslim...
Maybe it's anti-imperialism, who knows... perhaps some middle eastern sunni muslims were really upset that Sweden ever had an empire, and decided that ramming a crowd with a truck was a good way to avenge the "oppression" perpetrated by Sweden 300 years ago.
That, or maybe you could adjust your worldview, and realise that religious fanatism has been a pretty strong motivator for atrocities throughout history, and even in such enlightened times as ours, there are still people who would conduct the most horrendous acts for their faith and the credibility it gives them within their group.
In all cases, the Chinese, who also suffered from such attacks (the perpetrators were of the same religion), found a "solution" that is much more aligned with imperialistic norms throughout history. They have not been struck since.
And no, be at rest, I am not for the establishment of a surveillance state, but pointing the wilful blindness in your reasoning.
klibertp · 13 days ago
> That, or maybe you could adjust your worldview, and realise that religious fanatism has been a pretty strong motivator for atrocities throughout history
But I do agree! I'm not trying to say that religion (and culture, more broadly) is not an enabling factor or even one of the important causes for terrorist attacks.
What I'm disputing is the assertion that religion is the sole cause, and the attacks would continue with the same intensity if the policies in the attacked countries were to change.
As I mentioned before, that wouldn't eliminate all the attacks: if your culture is fundamentally incompatible with some other culture, which also praises martyrdom, chances are you will get attacked by religious fanatics motivated by their beliefs. That's the case for Sweden. Germany and Britain sent troops to ME multiple times in the past 20 years alone, at the behest of USA, so they get both the religious fanatics and "freedom fighter" kinds of attacks.
Again, I'm not disputing that some cultures, faiths, and populations have a higher probability of resorting to terrorism. I'm not saying that GTFO of the ME would solve all terrorist attacks. However, I believe the imperialist policy is one of the reasons people try to blow other people up, and that dropping said policy could, in a few decades (!), result in the lower attack rate.
That's all; I'm not trying to say religion (particular kinds of it, especially) is not a factor. It most definitely is. As I mentioned, the sectarian bloodshed is very common and often takes the form of terror attacks. You will always get religious fanatics trying to kill others because they don't fit into their doctrine. However, the foreign policy does matter, and you can reduce the rate of attacks greatly by not antagonizing people who are not religious fanatics, but would still want to blow themselves up to "save their nation", to "reclaim sovereignty", to "destroy the occupiers", and so on.
So yeah: religion is, for sure, a risk factor. But so is foreign policy, and my argument is that the policy is the bigger factor and the one that is much easier to adjust. To get rid of religious-motivated terror attacks, you would need to become Iran (and that wouldn't work: you'd just get Christian terrorists!); to get rid of "freedom fighter" kind of attacks, you just need to stop forcing your way into countries half a world away.
Jensson · 16 days ago
> I'm sorry to break it to you - the plural you - but all the terrorists that are not traditionally domestic (local leftist/rightist extremists are everywhere, after all) - and the fact they are against the West - is simply a consequence of Western politics.
Then why doesn't south America perform a lot of terrorist attacks? If that was the reason then you would see sub saharan africa perform way more terrorist attacks than the middle east.
No, the elephant in the room is religious zealots, they perform terrorist attacks, most other groups do not perform a lot of terrorism. A history of oppression just makes you happy the oppressors left, it doesn't make you a terrorist that go and try to make the oppressors come back like the middle east does.
dark-star · 16 days ago
doxxing and/or stalking the kids (minors) of the person you disagree with is still kind of a d*ck move though
tim-tday · 16 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.
dataflow · 16 days ago
I'm confused reading this. How in the world is GPS-tracking someone's car supposed to show hypocrisy with respect to encryption?
egorfine · 16 days ago
Because this someone wants to know location of everyone in the country while his own location should be of course private and protected.
defrost · 16 days ago
Hmmm, in context he was(?) tracking a public ministers car.
I'm Australian and I'm all for peeling back and making transparent all the comings and goings of public officials (within reason) - they deserve a good return, a hefty return even, for dedicated public service .. and they deserve to know that there's a hammer waiting for any betrayal of public trust, shady financial dealings (while in office), etc.
As a "known in advance covenant" that's not altogether unreasonable, raises the bar for would be Trumpesque grifters, and allows for privacy for those not seeking access to public offices, trust, and cookie jars.
dataflow · 16 days ago
I still don't understand what that has to do with encryption. Are these two separate policy proposals, one for GPS tracking and one for encryption, that this person is supporting?
bondarchuk · 16 days ago
Think about why do governments want to ban encryption? Because they want to know everything about you all the time. Collecting information on someone such as their location is of the same order.
gpvos · 16 days ago
It may be of the same order, but it is a different thing. No one, not even techies like here on HN, are going to see his actions as valid.
bondarchuk · 16 days ago
He has to use a different method because obviously he does not have a backdoor into the prime minister's phone. The fact that "obviously wrong" invasive methods have to be used (now) to imitate something that the prime minister want to apply to every citizen (except himself and his buddies) in the future can be seen as part of the point.
gpvos · 16 days ago
Yes, but that also means he both goes too far (for people like me who might sympathize with him) and loses the connection with the original issue, creating his own communication problem. Yes, it is good and necessary to show politicians what they are doing to the citizens they are supposed to represent, but that does not justify all means.
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
It’s not fundamentally different than indiscriminately scanning everyone’s private communication (what the Danish government is trying to accomplish on the EU level)
gpvos · 16 days ago
I think we'll keep disagreeing on what "fundamentally different" means. Agreed that the Danish gov't proposals are reprehensible and deserve counteraction.
dataflow · 16 days ago
> Think about why do governments want to ban encryption? Because they want to know everything about you all the time.
Or, say, because they want a judicial warrant to be sufficient for obtaining someone's information without their consent?
> Collecting information on someone such as their location is of the same order.
Huh? This sounds crazy.
bondarchuk · 16 days ago
It's not that complicated. Minister wants to remove citizens privacy. Protester invades privacy of minister in response. On the one hand I agree that gps-tracking is not exactly the same as analyzing people's messages, on the other hand one can often infer whereabouts through messaging services indirectly or even directly such as when people share their gps location with one another (a feature that e.g. whatsapp has).
Anyway, apparently this Peter Hummelgaard has said:
"I indisputably believe that surveillance creates an increased sense of security ... and given that the prerequisite for freedom is security, yes, I believe that more surveillance equates to more freedom"
so I think you will find it easier to understand these kinds of protest actions if you consider them in the context of privacy vs. surveillance more broadly conceived.
(source for quote https://mastodon.social/@chatcontrol/115314954743042414 -> https://www.dr.dk/lyd/special-radio/prompt/prompt-2025/egois...)
dataflow · 16 days ago
> It's not that complicated. Minister wants to remove citizens privacy. Protester invades privacy of minister in response.
"It's not that complicated"... indeed?
Privacy was a thing long before encryption even existed. So were stalking, wiretapping, etc. That whole time, judicial warrants had always been legally and practically adequate for obtaining and reviewing evidence that was physically accessible. (And for arresting stalkers and wiretappers.)
Encryption changed all that. It effectively undermined the ability of warrants to do their job.
Regardless of how you feel about the above, surely you agree that none of that is factually incorrect, right? Plaintext + privacy were simultaneously a thing for a long time, right?
So, whatever you feel, doesn't it feel a little disingenuous to suggest that the two are necessarily tied together? And to smear someone as hypocritical because they believe in both? Did the guy ever advocate for exposing everyone's real-time location?
Look, I don't even know the guy. And I'm not even trying to defend anything here on its merits. I'm just trying to set the record straight as to what the facts and the logical implications are(n't). Do you(/him/etc.) want an honest debate? Where you can actually win with people coming to support your ideas on their merits? Or do you want to take the craziest logical leaps and lose all your potential supporters in the process?
bondarchuk · 16 days ago
>That whole time, judicial warrants had always been legally and practically adequate for obtaining and reviewing evidence that was physically accessible.
Certainly not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence
dataflow · 16 days ago
You're telling me that in Denmark they can't open your letters even with a judicial order?
The Danish constitution also mentions privacy, in the form of paragraph 72 that stipulates that the confiscation and examination of letters and other papers; as well the interception of postal-, telegraph- and telephone communication cannot be done without a judicial order.
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
> So were stalking, wiretapping, etc. That whole time, judicial warrants had
Those things were costly and didn’t scale very well. Which is why it was more tolerable.
Without encryption and with legally required backdoors the authorities can just “wiretap” everyone just in case they might commit a crime. That is what the Danish government wants to do by pushing ChatControl in the EU. There is absolutely nothing crazy about that and they are perfectly transparent about what they are doing. Most sensible people believe that that’s a too high cost.
prepend · 16 days ago
Encryption is used to remain private in ones comings and goings and communication.
It’s not the same as gps, but it’s similar. If you can decrypt someone’s communications, you can more easily determine their location.
expedition32 · 16 days ago
Lol that's bullshit. There is a difference between "accessible to law enforcement in a official criminal investigation overseen by a judge" and "public to everyone".
What these weirdo hacktivists don't understand is that the voting public wants to live in a society.
skeaker · 16 days ago
"You take my privacy, I take yours" would be the thought process here. Not complicated.
Lerc · 16 days 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 · 16 days ago
> but their research tells them
Thier "research" might be full of yes men.
prepend · 16 days ago
I suspect their research is as rigorous and valid as their philosophy.
TremendousJudge · 16 days ago
what do you think they should do instead of what they currently do?
amiga386 · 16 days ago
They should find some other way to peacock in front of their fellow upper-class friends, because it annoys the fuck out of normal people that Tarquin and Cecily come from money and thus have the free time to throw soup on paintings or whatever publicity-seeking guff they try next.
If they want to fix the climate crisis, they should engage with normal people and find effective ways for them to save money (e.g. like https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/ do) or pressure councils and such into providing better public transport (e.g. like https://bettertransport.org.uk/ do).
People don't consume oil because they intrinsicly like consuming oil. People use private cars that consume oil because nobody else gives a shit (especially not councils) about their needs to get from A to B on time and doesn't offer suitable public transport. People don't buy into mad schemes that require £20,000 upfront and might return about £200 a year in savings, just for ideological reasons. They need cheaper things that pay off sooner, like portable solar panels they can put out in the garden when it's sunny.
Probably the best thing they could do is tell all their other ecological activists to stop being NIMBYs and stop protesting against pylons, so we can get lovely clean renewable energy, generated by turbines in the North Sea, to all the places in Britain where it's needed, especially the south east of England.
pcrh · 16 days 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.
oooyay · 16 days ago
I don't think Overton implied any causality between the phases of the window, just that distinct phases exist and that forces act on the window to cause it to shrink, expand, and shift.
Lerc · 16 days ago
Interestingly, considering my post above, I think that view of the Overton window misrepresents what Overton thought.
It was first and foremost a decription based on observation, but I think it conveyed that he felt that the Overton window was moved by vorces in the middle, and forces at the extremes moved it in the other direction.
There is a distinction to be made of how strongly the opinion is held compared to how much the opinion differs to the median view.
I think there is a correlation at the extremes, but I think the Just Stop Oil approach is deliberately splitting those two, performing extreme actions to promote a view that is not terribly extreme.
This is consistent with the view of the Overton window that the extremes repel and the moderate attracts.
Compare that to a vegan who doesn't campaign, but silently judges every meat eater as a murderer. If their views were more public, it may drive people the other way.
warumdarum · 16 days ago
Its a know tatic to sponsor the extreme fringe to discredit a cause. Just stop oil receiving oil money?
stephen_g · 16 days ago
If it’s a “well known tactic” (well known by whom?) then it’s a counter-productive one - the more the extreme is heard in the mainstream, the more rational the slightly less extreme version sounds (It’s something the right-wing tends to use extremely effectively, the left wing spends too much energy infighting)
tuesdaynight · 16 days ago
For the first time, I see that being a problem to right-wing parties, specially in USA. Now you have neonazis gathering a community by saying you are not extreme enough, and harassing the Jewish people of your side. It's crazy when you compare that to 10 years ago, but it is what it is.
flumes_whims_ · 16 days ago
Isn't Just Stop Oil funded by an oil heiress?
dibujaron · 16 days ago
If it is, would that bad? Seems like a person who might really have strong personal investment in the situation. Using the oil companies' profits to try to shrink them, seems good.
nozzlegear · 16 days ago
Teddy Roosevelt was the son of a wealthy and famous railroad baron, but he used that upbringing and status to rein in corporate monopolies and bust the oil barons' empires wide open, which started the decline of the gilded age. All that to say, being a wealthy, elite and privileged oil heiress doesn't necessarily mean this person doesn't want to end oil consumption.
(I don't know anything about her.)
basilikum · 16 days 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 · 16 days 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 · 16 days 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?
jopsen · 16 days 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-tday · 16 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 · 16 days 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...
bazoom42 · 16 days ago
Very charitable to call it a “grey zone” to stalk and dox children of politicians you dislike.
ceejayoz · 16 days ago
Isn't the point that those politicians want to do precisely that to others?
bazoom42 · 16 days ago
Stalk their children? What policy are you referring to?
ceejayoz · 16 days ago
Upthread:
> that same minister (Peter Hummelgaard) is one of the key forces behind anti-encryption here in Europe
wqaatwt · 16 days ago
Chat Control? The Denmark is the primary supporter of universal stalking across the EU.
WinstonSmith84 · 16 days 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 · 16 days 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 · 17 days ago
Another authoritarian govt
bypdx · 17 days ago
Privacy advocate with Google-nest cameras inside his home?
foder · 17 days 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.
hdgvhicv · 16 days ago
Hilarious take, why ban it by accountable governments but not unaccountable companies (which can then sell to accountable governments anyway)
freedomben · 16 days ago
Where did you see anarcho capitalist? I only saw "libertarian" (which is not the same thing).
jchw · 17 days 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 · 17 days ago
On device recording, so at least the illusion of privacy.
ale42 · 16 days 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 · 16 days 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 · 16 days 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.
spragl · 16 days 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.
breppp · 17 days 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
teiferer · 17 days 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?
klustregrif · 16 days 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.
philipwhiuk · 16 days ago
> Success in what exactly? There a very strong political movement in Denmark towards protecting privacy rights
Doesn't seem to be working.
klustregrif · 16 days ago
By what metric? The fact that he got arrested for stalking the prime ministers children and releasing private information speaks toward protecting privacy not an issue if lacking privacy.
You can’t just declare “I am an anti violence activist” then go out and beat up politicians and declare that the system has a problem with violence when you get arrested.
This is the equivalent of what he’s done. He claims to support privacy laws so he violated the privacy of someone who is currently protected by the PET (equivalent of FBI) due to safety concerns and he proudly proclaimed that he did so by stalking her children. He’s not a political activist he’s a drug dealer who’s hell bent on getting revenge on politicians because he just spent 8 months in jail after being convicted on counts of death threats harassment and illegal possession of arms and drugs.
pepperoni_pizza · 16 days ago
> By what metric?
By the metric of Denmark being the leading force being Chat Control, Palantir driven panopticon and worse.
itwaswatson · 16 days ago
*winning
Sorry, you made a silly typo that made you look bad. I fixed it.
m00dy · 16 days ago
I bet he lives in Amager because his door looks very similar to mine when I was living in there.
SG- · 16 days 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 · 16 days ago
i guess they weren't trying to get his computer in a powered up state.
IceDane · 16 days 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-resistor · 16 days 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_oat · 16 days 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.
gaiagraphia · 16 days 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_oat · 16 days 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 · 16 days 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.
marysol5 · 16 days ago
Simp much
Fnoord · 16 days 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.
marysol5 · 16 days ago
Calling yourself a "privacy advocate" while gloating that you posted PII is quite something
gaiagraphia · 16 days 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 · 16 days 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...
seb1204 · 16 days ago
Twitter is even the place for this kind of news? What does people keep there?
4ggr0 · 15 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.