Danish privacy activist Lars Andersen raided by police

Police go directly for the circuit breaker panel to avoid being filmed

This post will be in English, because there apparently is a lot of interest in what happened to me yesterday.

I'm a libertarian Danish privacy activist and former police officer, and I have been doing activism for about 15 years. I have had a bit of time to think about my arrest and the actions of the masked police that broke down my door - with no prior warning.

The preface 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-digit and an 8-digit number with letters. I didn't tell what they meant, but they were prime minister Mette Frederiksen's social security and phone number.

I also published a screenshot of me trying to interview Mette Frederiksen on WhatsApp, asking her about her wanting to ban encryption (CSA) and introducing mass surveillance via granting the police intelligence services access to all sorts of information (medical journals, social media posts, DNA registers meant for research, and so on).

That resulted in me being arrested by armed and masked police breaking down my door without me having any chance of opening it for them.

The raid

When the two civilian-dressed masked men entered the apartment, one of them immediately went for the circuit breaker panel to shut off the power to my router. They then removed my Google Nest cameras - because they knew that the cameras contain local storage. That way they could avoid having video of the (in my view) illegal arrest.

Only the few moments before the power was cut was filmed. There is video of me asking them for the charges - and them refusing to tell me (which is illegal). But I can't access it, because they took the cameras. I'm not even sure if that is legal.

In Denmark it is (nominally) totally legal to film the police. That way it is possible to know what happened and it's not just your word against theirs.

Denmark and the West are moving in the wrong direction, and it makes me sad.