Lauri Love
Finnish-British activist charged extraterritorially with stealing data from United States Government computers
Lauri Love (; born 14 December 1984, United Kingdom) is a British activist who was previously charged by the United States for his alleged activities with the hacker collective Anonymous. Love's case has been cited as precedent in the Julian Assange extradition proceedings.
Early life and education
Love is from Stradishall, Suffolk. His parents, Alexander Love, a prison chaplain at HM Prison Highpoint North, and Sirkka-Liisa Love (a Finnish citizen), who also works at the prison, live in Stradishall. He has dual citizenship of the United Kingdom and Finland.
After dropping out of sixth form college and working in a turkey plant, Love applied for a Finnish passport, and then served in the Finnish Army for six months, became a conscientious objector and finished another six months of his obligation in alternative civilian service.
After that, he applied at the University of Nottingham in England and dropped out in his second term after a physical and mental collapse, then at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, but dropped out in his second year, again for health reasons. He was part of the 2011 Hetherington House Occupation, a student protest at Glasgow University.
United States indictment
In January 2013, the website of the United States Sentencing Commission was replaced with a video protesting the treatment of activist Aaron Swartz who had committed suicide days earlier. The video claimed that those responsible had obtained secrets from the United States Army, Missile Defense Agency, and NASA but they were only ever released in encrypted form.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lauri Love” as finnish-British activist charged extraterritorially with stealing data from United States Government computers. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as finnish-British activist charged extraterritorially with stealing data from United States Government computers. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16873050. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984, 2011 and 2013.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Lauri Love” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.