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June 16th, 2014

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A hacker collective called Anonymous has punished government coalition member Socialistisk Folkeparti for last week signing a mass internet surveillance bill by releasing the personal information – including CPR numbers and home addresses – of nearly 20 party members.

Groups like Anonymous question where the government will draw the line between upholding national security and  violating personal privacy rights, as these loose definitions tend to create a grey area, they argue, that governments can use to their advantage.

Hypocritical attitude
“Today, 11 June 2014, you revealed your true colours after signing the latest bill for the Danish ‘Center for cyber-security’," read a post submitted by ‘Anonymous’ on the hacker text-sharing site Pastebin.

"For months we have observed your hypocritical attitude towards the issues of privacy violations. You must be proud of your achievement of expanding the Danish surveillance system yet again and again. You all wish for more privacy, but only for yourself, not your citizens."

The bill authorises internet surveillance when it “constitutes a necessary, appropriate and proportionate measure within a democratic society to safeguard national security (i.e state security), defence, public security, and the prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of criminal offences or of unauthorised use of the electronic communication system”, explained the Danish Ministry of Justice in a statement.

A hacktive week
Anonymous has been quite active in the past week, also taking credit for hacking the websites of a number of 2014 World Cup sponsors, launching DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks on them to temporarily shut them down.

The group also hacked into over 300 email accounts of Brazilian Foreign Ministry employees.

The attack on the World Cup was a reaction to the Brazilian government spending millions of dollars on World Cup infrastructure instead of helping the country’s poor, reports Motherboard VICE.