[Abbenay] Forskningsavdelningen raided by police

[Leo Nordwall]

--- For quick conclusion, scroll down to the end

Terrible news. Terrible...

>From what I have read from you it is obvious that the police were after the
computers. It's also obvious that they are hiding the facts about the real
motives, as you don't bring an IT-team to stop illegal sales of beer, nor
~50 masked police officers to check out the fire escapes in the middle of
the night, seizing computers while doing so. Not even the suspicions that
the key blanks were to be used for something hold up to that kind of action
being taken.

It's the computers. And they are very obviously NOT saying that is so. Why
is that they can't present allegations? I'll pass on answering that one, but
I'd say they are either 1) very confused, or, 2) if they act according to
some pattern, i'd say such a large (and controversial mode of action) must
be seen as very motivated indeed or else that kind of resources would not
have been used

So why the interest? Either Forskningsavd is up to something MAJOR they
don't tell anyone about (as a whole or a renegade member within) - or not.
If Forskningsavd would be up to some major scheme, it would be a very odd
strategy to try to expose things as much as possible, as they are doing now.
Counter-productive, even. So I'll take your word that you are not. :)

Then, if we assume the police weren't TOTALLY confused to muster such an
action, I can only arrive at one conclusion for doing this so thouroughly
even though the chance of exposing criminal activity at Forskningsavd was so
low, making it worthwile anyhow - and that is political interest. Somehow,
the slim possibility of revealing Something or Anything at all, was
motivation enough, all of a sudden. After all - this sort of thing haven't
happened too often before, right?

We could imagine a new police policy, where these sorts of crimes (alcohol
sales, having a key machine and possibly insecure fire escapes) are
generally being seen as VERY SERIOUS and warrants massive police
intervention. I don't think we see a upcoming breakdown on these things in
general. It has not happened yet and these is no political interest to fuel
such an increase in resource useage on expense of other crimes. If so, this
will be obvious very soon as massive raids will take place just about
everywhere in the city. If not a general interest, then it must be a
specific interest. So once again: why the interest in Forskningsavd?

The only explanation I can arrive at is a political interest of some kind,
that would make the remote chance of busting Forskningsavd worth it, a
perspective on what is a threat which is very different from what publicly
is considered as such (or else the police would say what that threat was).

I'm not going to speculate into what the political interest is that have
magnified what little threat there could be from an open group interested in
experimenting with technological systems. But it's helluva target to pick.
And no matter if the police "got it all wrong" or "overdid it" - we are
apparently dealing with a very paranoid institution to take these measures.

I am very sad for you and for us and for everyone.

// Simulacra

PS. I have some hardware you could have if you like, but it's all in
Stockholm.

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 9:26 PM, Christoffer Jerkeby <kugghjul at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi, I was in the raid, and lost alot of stuff. According to police the
> 'lanskriminalen' were there for forskningsavd. There is no charges
> made against anyone, they did not find any drugs.
>
> Look at this article for details its fairly acurate:
>
> http://sydsvenskan.se/malmo/article578671/Datorbeslag-vid-alkoholrazzia.html
>
> I dont know about the link to copenhagen, but police officially stated
> that they were able to do this because they had additional recources
> that was going to be used on the 30th of november.
>
> ' Hackerakademin. Polisens påstås tro att Forskningsavdelningen vid
> Utkanten driver olaglig verksamhet - intrång i trådlösa nätverk,
> piratkopiering, förmedling av olagligt material.'
>
> I want to point out that this is a public theory and probably not a
> statement from police.
>
> Hellekin I need your help. Use translate.google.com for the article
> posted above.
>
> Im unfortunately quite disconnected from the internets from now on.
>
> Thanks for caring regards kugg
>
> On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Hellekin O. Wolf (/tmp/lab)
> <hellekin at hackerspaces.org> wrote:
> > On Sun 2009-11-29 at 14:29:29 +0100, Sebastian A. Liem wrote:
> >> On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 1:46 PM, Ged Wed <gedw99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > Whats the link to copenhagen ? Are you kidding ?
> >>
> >> Before big meeting like Copenhagen where activists are expected to
> >> be, well..., active the police often prepare by clanking down on
> >> "alternative political groupings".
> >>
> >> Dunno if that's the case here. Just speculations.
> >>
> >> -- Sebastian
> >>
> > *** I'd like to hear about the people from Malmö. The police news report
> > mentions lots of alcohol, a couple of people found with drugs and one
> > detained (who? why?).
> >
> > With the recent eviction of Abbenay, I'm wondering if the authorities
> just
> > find hackerspaces a bit too visible in Sweden.
> >
> > There's also the upcoming talks in Copenhagen, but I prefer not linking
> this
> > event to those, as it might sound a bit conspirationist, although I can
> > understand it if police in Scandinavia have received instructions to
> tighten
> > the whole area.
> >
> > But you just don't seize computers while searching for alcohol.
> >
> > ==
> > hk
> >
> > --
> >  |_/H\_|     http://hackerspaces.org/                | |o| |
> >  [_xSx_]     irc://irc.freenode.net/hackerspaces     | | |o|
> >  ! \O/ !     xmpp:hellekin at hackerspaces.org<xmpp%3Ahellekin at hackerspaces.org>         |o|o|o|
> >  :  :  :
> >
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