Authorities Have Closed The Investigation

The Norwegian police announced last Friday that they’ve concluded their investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Dutch cyber security expert and Wikileaks associate Arjen Kamphuis about one year ago. Authorities say that he “most likely” died in a kayaking accident.

His body has not been found, and he is believed to have been swept out to sea.

Kamphuis was known for his work in cyber security, including his book called Information Security for Journalists. He had been employed as a contributor chief technology officer of Gendo, a company he co-founded, at the time of his disappearance.

He was associated with WikiLeaks and had also worked for Brunel, where he was apparently the person responsible for getting retired NSA official William Binney involved in the Netherlands regarding cyber espionage.

There are many questions left unanswered for his family, friends, and fans.

In May 2018, he implied that his job was dangerous and shared that on Twitter:

Where bullets and bits meet; infosecurity training for journalists operating in high-risk environments. Dataleaks can have serious consequences for people working in warzones. Very proud to help make some of the bravest people around a little bit safer. pic.twitter.com/WFf9heDPD2 — Arjen Kamphuis (@ArjenKamphuis) May 1, 2018 Archive.is

Personal Belongings Found

Some of his friends and colleagues in the Netherlands thought that he intentionally disappeared, meaning to escape his lifestyle of activism, possibly out of fear. Others said he was happy when he left for a summer getaway in Norway. One of his friends even created a timeline of before and after the disappearance, trying to make sense of it all.

The investigation determined Kamphuis was in the Norwegian town of Bodo, where he was staying at the Scandinavia Hotel. From there, it is believed that he traveled to the small town of Rognan. Police say his personal belongings were found floating out in the water, his kayak was recovered with a hole in its hull, and his paddle was found on the shore of Skjerstad Fjord.

Three cell phone towers picked up a signal from Kamphuis’s phone 10 days after his disappearance on August 20, 2018. His SIM card was active in Stavanger, a thousand kilometers south of Rognan. Police learned that two truck drivers from Eastern Europe had found the phone and other electronic items while stopped for a break, where they were finishing in the spot the kayak was found. They thought someone had thrown them away.

The police have no reason to believe these truck drivers were involved in any way in the disappearance.

Case Closed?

“[We] have concluded that Mr Kamphuis most likely suffered an accident in the evening of August 20, 2018, while kayaking in the Skjerstad Fjord a few kilometers north of the village of Rognan in Nordland County in northern Norway, and was subsequently lost at sea,” the police said in a statement.

There are many questions left unanswered for his family, friends, and fans. Some assume the worst, and that it wasn’t an accident at all. Others question whether top intelligence agencies had anything to do with it. But all of that is speculation.

We do know, however, that the police investigation into the disappearance of Arjen Kamphuis has ended.