Danish government will shut down encrypted messaging (including via blocking)

https://www.version2.dk/artikel/minister-vil-lukke-krypterede-beskeder-ned-professor-kalder-det-ekstremt-vidtgaaende

by intunderflow • 2 years ago

18 23 2 years ago

Translated copy:

Minister will shut down encrypted messages. Professor calls it "extremely far-reaching"

Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard wants encrypted messaging services such as Whatsapp and Telegram to go where the pepper grows and mentions geoblocking as an option to close them down. A professor of cyber security is outraged by the proposal, which also causes concern at the Danish Association of Journalists.

It doesn't happen very often that cyber security professor Jens Myrup Pedersen himself contacts journalists to get his point of view across.

But after reading the media coverage that the Minister of Justice wants encrypted services such as WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram shut down, he needs to get something "dirty out".

"Those you want to monitor will probably have to find other places to go. The bottom line is that it will be completely trivial to circumvent this, so the minister's position is far-fetched,' says Jens Myrup Pedersen, who is one of Denmark's most cited experts in IT security and national coach for the cyber national team.

At a press conference on Tuesday, side by side with the Swedish Minister of Justice, Gunnar Strömmar, Peter Hummelgaard said that we had to deal with "that it is every man's right to freedom to communicate on encrypted services".

National Police Chief Thorkild Fogde followed up and said that the citizens' legal guarantee is ensured by the fact that the police must first have a court order from a judge before they can gain access.

Doesn't it make sense that the police can access the communications of the worst thugs with a warrant?

"If you first give the possibility to break into encrypted messages, it will also be misused. It could be a Russian spy in the police who can then read the Minister of Justice's messages,' says Jens Myrup Pedersen.

The question is ultimately who we want to be, believes Jens Myrup Pedersen, who calls the whole discussion "very principled".

"If we start breaking the encryption, it will lead to mass surveillance of ordinary people, and then we cannot tell the other countries to stop monitoring their human rights activists, political opponents and journalists. Because then we also do it ourselves,' he points out.

This is how the police get access to your communications Danish telecommunications providers are obliged to log traffic data about our telecommunications in accordance with the rules in the Administration of Justice Act and to hand over telecommunications data to the police or assist in the interception of telephone conversations after a court order.

New digital services such as Whatsapp and Signal offer users an encrypted communication without storing data, so that there will be no data to hand over if the police with a court order in hand should request it.

Source: Lecturer, Ph.D. Lene Wacher Lentz, Department of Law, Aalborg University

Journalist chairman: Harms our work At the Danish Association of Journalists, chairman Tine Johansen is also very concerned about the idea of a showdown with the encrypted messaging services. Journalists use them extensively to communicate with sources whose identity it is important to protect.

"It is an important principle that journalists can guarantee source protection for the people who put a lot at stake to talk to representatives of the press. If we can no longer provide them with that protection, it is deeply problematic,' she says.

Tine Johansen, chairman of the Danish Association of Journalists It is an important principle that journalists can guarantee source protection, says Tine Johansen, chairman of the Danish Journalists' Association. Illustration: Benita Marcussen. In large parts of the world, press freedom is under pressure, also in countries close to us such as Poland and Hungary. Therefore, there is a need for protection so that whistleblowers can hand over information in a safe way, she believes.

"You cannot guarantee people that they can hand over information safely if that protection is breached. Then it will be a violation of our agreement,' she says and also refers to the EU's new regulation on freedom of the press (European Media Freedom Act).

Here it appears that you must not monitor journalists. But in connection with the adoption of the proposal, there were several forces from various EU countries who wanted that part out of the regulation with arguments that the state's security could be at stake.

Tine Johansen understands well the desire for security and the fight against crime. But she believes that it is a dangerous path to go down, and gives as an example the EU Commission's proposal for so-called chat control, which should allow all encrypted communication to be scanned for harmful content about children.

"I'm just saying that any intervention in communication could damage our ability to provide source protection," she says.

Geoblocking makes no sense The Minister of Justice also explained at the press conference that he could not understand that so many politicians in Christiansborg were against the EU proposal on chat control.

According to the minister, many of the encrypted messaging services are used to a large extent to facilitate various forms of crime, and he calls it a " big legal headache " to get the shovel under them.

But if the EU proposal becomes a reality, it could lead to a slippery slope, believes Professor Jens Myrup Pedersen.

"If you make that proposal a reality, there will soon be a Danish Minister of Justice who will think that you should open up to scanning content that looks like something criminal. Once you open up to it, you're on a slippery slope that you can't stop,' he says.

One of the minister's proposals is that these services could be geoblocked. What do you think about that solution?

"I don't understand that, it makes no sense. Unless you want to ban VPN connections or monitor all communications in and out of the country. This is an extremely far-reaching proposal. But just the fact that you think it should be that way is an extreme point of view. To be a bit nice, I hope he has been misunderstood,' says Jens Myrup Pedersen.

Here is the full quote from the Minister of Justice "I would like to add that one of the things they (the Swedes, ed) have done skillfully is their ability to actually decrypt these communication services, and it was one of the focal points that they wanted to strengthen the police's capabilities to decrypt communications and we have said that in light of this situation we will add even more resources to it. Then there is another thing too, it is a political conflict, to take a stand that it is every man's freedom right to communicate on encrypted services. We have had a discussion about a regulation in the EU to protect against child pornography, where everyone has been against a regulation where you can screen for child pornography, but many of these services are used to a large extent to facilitate various types of crime, and for me it's a huge legal headache to get the shovel under them. My political intention is, if I could stand on it alone, it would be to say that there are some of these services that must be geoblocked or shut down for them. It is not legally possible today, but we are constantly trying to see if they can be developed and invented."

JensRantil• 2 years ago

This is an incorrect translation. The word "vil" in Danish translates to "want", not "will".

Lewton2• 2 years ago

*wants to, not will

hoseja• 2 years ago

Alternately, wills to :)

Deukhoofd3• 2 years ago

Is the title misleading? This looks like a response to the minister of justice in Denmark stating he wants encrypted messaging blocked, not an actual policy.

Lewton2• 2 years ago

It's a mistranslation of 'vil' => will, when 'vil' actually means "would like to"

gerikson• 2 years ago

Yeah, someone either doesn't know Danish or the translation service sucks.

The minister wants to shut down the service, not will shut them down.

brigadier132• 2 years ago

Why are multiple countries in the EU going after privacy and free expression?

chrisjj2• 2 years ago

Crime.

Deukhoofd3• 2 years ago

It's the same as what's going on worldwide. With more and more of our interactions moving to the internet, it's become harder for law enforcement to track what's going on. Where they could in the past for example intercept someone's mail and with a warrant potentially open it, that's now not really possible any more. They want that ability again, but now online. With E2E that's of course not possible.

At the same time law enforcement agencies across the world are salivating at the idea of being able to automatically detect crime at scale. To do so they need massive amounts of personal information. This would mean a massive invasion of privacy, but they argue that it's worth it to prevent crime.

Personally I completely disagree with that point of view, as I believe there are better ways to detect crime without having to go through everyone's laundry, but there you have it.

ricardobeat• 2 years ago

Once encrypted messaging apps are forbidden, what stops criminals from simply implementing encryption at the edges on top of any other messaging platform? This is pointless.

chrisjj2• 2 years ago

The authorities would then just block unintellible communications.

netsharc• 2 years ago

Well, I imagine if they can snoop the messages and what they see "gibberish", that'll be an arrestable offence of "using encryption".

I imagine the Chinese chat apps have this. The above law might not be written anywhere, but if they see chats that are just "noise", they can pay you a visit. Or put you under surveillance.

I guess then one would have to invent coded languages.

jellykid2• 2 years ago

Are they going to block binary files from being transferred? Maybe block images? It's an impossible task if someone really knows what they are doing.

fragsworth• 2 years ago

You could embed your encrypted messages in legitimate looking images, or any other type of file. There's no way to stop it.

rich_sasha• 2 years ago

I suppose doing encrypted comms really well is actually quite hard, and more susceptible to decryption.

Haven't we all received a password-protected file and password in the same email?

ljlolel• 2 years ago

In German and Danish, “Ich will” or “vil” means “wants to” not the English “will” which is a false cognate

eesmith• 2 years ago

They are cognates as they directly descend from the same parent word in Proto-Germanic. See https://www.etymonline.com/word/will .

They have different meanings, but that doesn't make them false cognates. The example at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognate is: "Cognates need not have the same meaning, as they may have undergone semantic change as the languages developed independently. For example English starve and Dutch sterven 'to die' or German sterben 'to die' all descend from the same Proto-Germanic verb, *sterbaną 'to die'."

jellykid2• 2 years ago

What are they going to do ban math? That's all encryption is. Just because you block a few services isn't going to prevent anything from being encrypted. I can do end-to-end with just a couple of certificates. Are they going to ban PGP or TLS next? Is everyone going to have to install a Danish root cert, so the gov't can spy on everything?

Deukhoofd3• 2 years ago

According to the article they want to ban encrypted chat services. This is of course the dumbest implementation, as (as the article points out), everyone who uses encrypted messaging for illegal purposes will just switch to another lesser known service.

baal80spam• 2 years ago

The frog is getting boiled.

josefritzishere• 2 years ago

I'm waiting for the law(s) that explicitly make some kinds of math or algorithms illegal.

Danish government will shut down encrypted messaging (including via blocking)

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