Denmark's Justice Minister calls encrypted messaging a false civil liberty

https://mastodon.social/@chatcontrol/115204439983078498

by belter • 10 months ago

453 297 10 months ago

mastodon.social

christkv• 10 months ago

Well then why does he need an exception from the rule.

Aldipower• 10 months ago

Det er virkelig et skam. Pinlig.

vages• 10 months ago

*en skam

sgt• 10 months ago

Han skriver dansk

fxtentacle• 10 months ago

I look forward to soon reading about Peter Hummelgaard's leaked private emails in the newspapers. Let's hope (for him) that he was right about not needing any privacy or encryption. And let's hope his friends/family agree.

askonomm• 10 months ago

Well according to the Chat Control legislation proposal, politicians are, of course, exempt from monitoring.

mrighele• 10 months ago

Note that he said "everyone's civil liberty". It means that he thinks that it is not everybody's right, not that it is nobody's right. They want to keep the right for themselves.

Almondsetat• 10 months ago

Politicians' work emails are exempt, but private ones as citizens aren't

troyvit• 10 months ago

I think (or hope) that the point of the parent was to leak his emails anyway just so he gets a taste of what it's like for citizens to live in the society he wants to create. Personally I get the sense that politicians are too narcissistic to learn a lesson from that but it would still be fun.

mcv• 10 months ago

Because everybody knows that politicians are immune to the temptations of child porn...

dathinab3• 10 months ago

it's very ironic that they don't realize that this really doesn't work that way in practice

whatever backdoor you put in

- will be used for industry espionage

- will be used against politicians where it's supposed shouldn't apply

- will be used by state actors systematically destabilize EU countries if the relationship with US, China, Russia get's worse (e.g. "ups, I spoofed non encrypted message and no it looks like the prime minister is a pedo" kind of situations)

l-one-lone• 10 months ago

Nope. That's not true. There is a provision that exempts people working for state security (e.g. spies), not politicians. Please don't make up stuff: this proposed law is already bad enough.

willi595498792• 10 months ago

those are the only people who should never be exempt

Mistletoe• 10 months ago

Encrypted messaging is a basic human right. Those who seek to end it should be put on the same lists as other human rights abusers.

zoobab• 10 months ago

Those politicians can barely write laws that are not a frontal attack on fundamental rights.

patchtopic2• 10 months ago

well said.

b3lvedere2• 10 months ago

Not that i do not agree, but how did the humans actually do that a couple of thousands of years ago?

esafak• 10 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cryptography#Antiqu...

endgame• 10 months ago

I think that the cleaner argument is that the ability to have private conversations is a fundamental human right, and in the current technological environment, that means strong encryption.

bux93• 10 months ago

Egyptian inscriptions used alternate hieroglyphics to hide meaning. Substitution ciphers were known to the Romans. Those involve mathing, although only a bit of addition. The Vigenère cipher is only hundreds, rather than thousands of years old - at least, as far as we know; the Greeks or Romans certainly had the requisite math skills to pull that one off. More broadly, confidential communications existed. Mesopotamian clay tablets (ca. 2000 BCE) had envelopes with seals. You'd imagine breaking a seal would be punishable. The hippocratic oath (3rd century BCE) mentions keeping medical secrets.

But that's not to say a human right should not spring into existence as new technology becomes available. For instance, the freedom to receive information (especially radio stations, such as Voice of America) got some attention post WW II.

Atreiden• 10 months ago

They simply had their conversations in private, there was no surveillance state with the ability to monitor all conversations in real time, and no medium with which to facilitate this.

Encryption preserves our right to have private conversations in the digital era, where such surveillance is ubiquitous.

jillesvangurp• 10 months ago

It should be but the UN declaration on human rights (Article 12) is a bit fuzzy on the topic:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1966) states the following in Article 17:

1. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation. > 2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

The UN declaration on human rights dates back to just after WW II and the ICCPR does not really change anything. Encryption was not widely available and the breaking of things like Enigma was still a state secret. Phone taps were pretty common and the phone system still had human operators that could listen in trivially.

This doesn't mention encryption at all. And that's the problem. It's not covered as a human right under these declarations that lots of countries signed. And of course lots of the signers are taking lots of liberties with these rights. Lawful protection is a very vague label.

Of course, the modern practice of modern business communication happening via things like email, shared files, etc. and the very real risk of foreign nations spying on such communications require a very robust approach to encryption that is generally incompatible with installing back doors and giving arbitrary government agencies wide access to those. Of course such back doors are widely assumed to actually exist anyway but the scope of that is a bit murky. Does the NSA have access to your Google Drive? Maybe, probably. What if you are a business? What if that is hosted in the EU. Probably still yes. It's a valid reason for some EU companies to not want to use Google Drive and a few other US provided tools and infrastructure.

If the back doors leak, you compromise the security communications of all companies and people that use the affected platforms. If that goes unnoticed for a few years, your enemies gain a huge advantage.

When it's Germany vs. the Chinese, Russian, or North Korean intelligence agencies (to give a few practical examples), I'd prefer to not have German government agencies to be the weakest link in my communications. That's the risk that needs balancing.

Even if you trust them to have the right intentions (which is a big if), trusting them to be competent and worthy of that trust is another matter. I'd assume the worst actually. It only takes 1 person to be compromised here for this to go wrong. And with the level of Russian, Chinese, etc. intelligence activity, the only safe assumption is that there are going to be compromised people that will have wide access to information about back doors if not the actual back doors. In fact, for back doors to be useful for policing, a lot of people would need access. Without that level of access, the back doors are pointless. And with that they become a gigantic national security problem.

r2xdgw129• 10 months ago

Bloomberg recently published around 18,000 plain text Epstein mails from his Yahoo account which led to the firing of British US ambassador and long time powerful figure in the background Lord Mandelson.

This could have been achieved at least 15 years earlier, so encryption does not seem to be the main obstacle to investigations. In some cases.

Similarly, all investigations into Epstein related JP Morgan transactions have been obstructed, for example by the firing of a Virgin Islands GA who investigated too much.

Looking forward to some EU politician tweets on these issues.

giveita• 10 months ago

Epstein isn't a great example. It's someone leading an extravagant life we and connected to a rediculous number of people. That's a lot of people to try and get to use signal or exchange PGP keys with. Especially celebrities that wouldnt know what that is.

einarfd• 10 months ago

Oops, seems the quote is an old one, and not news. That invalidates my original post somewhat, and I'm sorry that I didn't do proper due diligence.

Here is the original post:

That doesn't sound like the rhetoric of someone who is winning. It sounds more like something someone pushed into a corner, and seeing their project crumbling would say.

But bringing up that it is about civil liberties is an important point, not the way he would like though.

You would think that trying to keep the discourse about criminals and pedophiles would be smarter for his side? I do not follow Danish politics, but I do start to wonder if he is just not very good at doing politics?

redprince• 10 months ago

Rest assured, he's also trying that route. That mastodon article links to parliamentary requests for clarification of aforementioned quote. In article 1425 he responds (google translate):

"We know that social media and encrypted services are unfortunately largely is used to facilitate many forms of crime. There are examples on how criminal gangs recruit completely through encrypted platforms young people to commit, among other things, serious crimes against persons. It is an expression of a cynicism that is almost completely incomprehensible.

We therefore need to look at how we can overcome this problem. Both in terms of what the services themselves do, but also what we from the authorities can do. It must not be the case that the criminals can hide behind encrypted services that authorities cannot access to."

[...]

"I also note that steps have been taken within the EU towards a strengthened regulation of, among other things, digital information services and social media platforms. For example, the European Commission has proposed a new Regulation on rules for preventing and combating sexual abuse of children."

[...]

"The government has a strong focus on eliminating digital violations – it applies especially when it comes to sexual abuse of children – and supports the proposed regulation, unlike the opposition."

fuzzfactor• 10 months ago

Even a 5 year old can tell right off the bat that it's a Minister of False Justice. Give me a break, more like an intrusive creep their parents want them to beware of. Most kids are taught not to lie, and they can smell it a mile away. Which is a bit more than a kilometer. Some adults just can not set a good example of what justice is, it's actually completely disgraceful when it gets to this point. Trying to be a bad influence on a younger generation. What's wrong with some people?

Kids are too intuitive naturally to believe for a minute that privacy and civil liberty are erroneous concepts. They're well aware by this age that it's usually an individual erroneous moron who doesn't understand simple stuff like this, who's causing the trouble and some of them are adults no different than the asinine kids they are quite familiar with.

As everybody knows, most average children by definition are born already having more intelligence than a below-average adult, kids just don't have a paycheck which depends on them having a dystopic point of view.

catigula• 10 months ago

If the government requires the ability to arbitrarily spy on anyone at will to exist (which they have, the encryption thing is mostly retrospective and unwillingness to use/reveal the bigger guns in large public cases), we are probably at a point when the nation state as we know it needs to be renegotiated entirely.

That being said I don't agree that his is necessary.

kriops8• 10 months ago

What an absolute clown literally trying to outlaw math. Are people going to jail every time they apply Fermat's little theorem, or what exactly is the plan here?

phkamp5• 10 months ago

I suggest you look into how much of chemistry, physics and biology has already been "outlawed", and how the legislatures went about it ?

aredox2• 10 months ago

Yeah, nitrogen chemistry, high-concentration hydrogen peroxyde is already fairly restricted, as well as poisons.

Including in the US. The "right to bear arms" doens't cover high-energy explosives.

kriops8• 10 months ago

If I possess, e.g., a certain quantity of U235, the government can act on the material, e.g., confiscate it because it is a physical entity. Meanwhile, I can arrive at the knowledge required for encryption, and even an encrypted message, a priori.

In other words, it is not even slightly comparable.

tclover• 10 months ago

Now that you see how the government lies in the area you actually understand, try to extrapolate a little and think about what else the government might be lying about ;)

koakuma-chan4• 10 months ago

They'll just ban encrypted apps?

kriops8• 10 months ago

Define 'encrypted app' in a way that is not just completely arbitrary and internally inconsistent.

mtlmtlmtlmtl• 10 months ago

And if they do that, do you think it will affect what criminals do?

HWR_14• 10 months ago

This doesn't seem hard to do. Messaging apps exist in app stores, transmit data through one of a few ISPs often past national boundaries to a couple of data centers. It's not hard for a national government to see the communication and stop it or punish those attempting it. It could be done by technical means, putting pressure of the stores, or anywhere along the chain. Countries block all social media by fiat. It seems easy enough.

kriops8• 10 months ago

It is easy to ban what are currently the most popular apps for encrypted messaging. But the math is more or less trivial, to the point that this will simply kick off a cat-and-mouse game the government cannot win. And that is before steganography comes into play.

At the absolute worst, OTPs are trivially uncrackable and relatively foolproof, assuming you can exchange keys out of band. Furthermore, it is trivial to generate keys that decode captured ciphertext into decoy cleartext, should the government try to coerce the keys from you.

I'm not saying OTP is practical for regular people in everyday chats (though it certainly can be for text, in my opinion). However, it is apparent to me that if RSA+AES becomes unviable, for example, then it will have nearly no impact on any criminal operation that cares about security.

_kb• 10 months ago

“The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.”

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathema...

All Australians now live with the Assistance and Access Act 2018, where yes in fact if you use the illegal math, receive a TCN and do not comply… straight to jail.

kriops8• 10 months ago

Australia is dystopic in more ways than one[1], so this unfortunately does not surprise me.

I probably do not have to point out the issue with the soundbite, but I am doing it anyway: The “laws” of mathematics are valid across all of existence. Last time I checked, that includes Australia. As a matter of fact, I have personally stored encrypted communications with an Australian vendor after the law went into effect (not that I knew about that law in particular). And I can confirm that the communications were indeed still encrypted.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kYIojG707w (Honest Government Ad | Our Last Fair Election?)

ErigmolCt5• 10 months ago

Trying to ban or weaken encryption is like trying to outlaw gravity because people fall down stairs

rayiner2• 10 months ago

I agree with you in substance. But do these cute little word games—where we redefine commonly understood strings of words with idiosyncratic meanings to obscure what’s actually being disputed—work on anyone? It’s like saying that gun control is “literally trying to outlaw chemical reactions and kinetic energy.” Why not just clearly articulate what right you think society should protect?

jacquesm2• 10 months ago

You mean like '1st amendment' and 'freedom of speech'?

kriops8• 10 months ago

Define encryption.

To help you along, you basically have two alternatives:

1. Be intentionally vague, so the definition encapsulates just about anything and can then be applied and enforced at will. This is obviously what they are going for, by the way, and *that* is the word game being played here.

2. Some set of sets of mathematical functions, contingent on some properties pertaining to computational complexity. This is what cryptography is and, as such, is the correct way to go about it. Non-exhaustively, one property we are looking for is that some data can only be considered 'encrypted' if the computational complexity of decoding it without a secret/key is strictly higher than with said secret/key.

As I also said in another comment, I can derive an encrypted message a priori. That makes it fundamentally different from any analogies tied to physics or chemistry.

HelloUsername• 10 months ago

Related discussion yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45242458

patchtopic2• 10 months ago

A false civil liberty they reserved for themselves.

31337Logic• 10 months ago

This Minister of "Justice" doesn't know the meaning of the word and should be fired immediately. Don't ever let anyone tell you that THEY are entitled to participate in YOUR private discussions. A good old fashioned "fuck you" does the trick, here.

shiandow• 10 months ago

Indeed it is not merely about the right people have to do something. It is about the right of the government to harm its citizens, all of them, all the time.

Svip2• 10 months ago

A few details to note: The quote is from August 2024 (last year), and the question (from an MP) to the minister is from September 2024 and so is the response, which can be read here:

https://www.ft.dk/samling/20231/almdel/reu/spm/1426/svar/207...

For those less familiar with Danish: the minister's answer is basically the same spiel about needing to protect children; and how people will still be protected by the legal system (you know, which is little consultation after you've been beaten up, swindled across borders or worse). So this quote is from a year before Denmark had the presidency in the EU and pushed Chat Control forward. (Though clearly they haven't changed their views on this.)

0xWTF2• 10 months ago

consultation

consolation

enlyth• 10 months ago

If he truly believes that, he should have no problem disclosing all of his private and personal messages and emails to us, for everyone to see on the internet.

The truth is that this is just another corrupt politician.

nicolailolansen• 10 months ago

The thing is, politicians will be exempt from the rules proposed by this chat control legislation.

"*EU politicians exempt themselves from this surveillance under "professional secrecy" rules."

source: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

arcmutex• 10 months ago

When Governments ban encryption, its like banning the citizens from sending unreadable gibberish messages over the network.

Encryption algorithm, source code and ciphertext are also free speech. Here is RSA printed on a T-shirt: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Munitions_T-shirt_(fron...

mr902102• 10 months ago

The Danish showing their claws. The grass isn’t greener.

otikik• 10 months ago

Those are not "claws". Claws are tools, and tools can be useful for an organism.

Those are signs of rot and fungal infection.

mr902102• 10 months ago

I stand corrected.

As a fellow EU citizen that came from a “third world country” I can’t help but to be surprised about 3 things:

- How slowly but surely the EU and its members are becoming exactly like the governments of said third world countries. (I’ve lived through them, trust me, I know)

- How unaware most citizens are about EU’s power hungriness. The same EU that hasn’t yet apologised for their attempt to clean up the US mess in the Middle East by taking on the displaced people from that region without proper integration plans.

- The fellow Europeans have little clue about the shit-show and corruption in Brussels. It’s rotten.

mrtksn• 10 months ago

Actually, having encryption defeating mechanisms makes a lot of sense when its limited to public servants, like the Denmark's Justice Minister. Those people are trusted with a lot of public resources, in fact all the public servants should have a monitoring device like a black box on them all the time and when something goes wrong that blackbox should be decrypt-able so we can look at the logs and see what went wrong.

Corruption and incompetence, solved.

miohtama2• 10 months ago

Chat Control proposal excludes politicians themselves from Chat Control.

bojan• 10 months ago

Former Dutch PM used to have an old Nokia with a very limited capacity to store messages[0], so he could always say he had to delete messages so he could keep receiving new ones.

[0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2429354-wissen-sms-jes-door-rutte-vol...

elric• 10 months ago

I think the parent commenter was aware of that and was deliberately flipping the tables on these self-serving politicians.

hulitu2• 10 months ago

all the public servants should have a monitoring device like a black box on them all the time and when something goes wrong that blackbox should be decrypt-able so we can look at the logs and see what went wrong.

no. Regards, Ursula

dabeeeenster3• 10 months ago

Several years ago the UK government started being defacto run via Whatsapp. I was absolutely furious about this, but seemed to be in a tiny minority of people who cared about it!

Our PM at the time of covid "lost" his Whatsapp backups, and his replacement also had problems getting access to Whatsapp messages. How convenient.

If you worked in a regulated industry this would be instant dismissal. For the UK govt its business as usual.

pxoe• 10 months ago

It may seem like it's "convenient", but whatsapp is truly a nightmare when you try to move it literally anywhere in any way. Huge backups, needing to transfer phone numbers, having to restore from backups, having and moving those backups in the first place, the way it's designed in that regard is the most inconvenient for a platform that doesn't even necessarily provide more security or anything for that to be worth it at all, particularly for people who don't even seek that kind of security or even know about it and just use it for "texting and stuff". Not to defend that or say that it isn't just a convenient excuse (it can be for sure), but just to say that whatsapp is possibly the most annoying app in that regard. It's such a pain in the ass I'd rather store all of that in the cloud. (Which ironically whatsapp pretty much just does anyway if it backs up to google drive, it just makes it the most inconvenient it could be)

JTbane• 10 months ago

Trump admin did the same thing with Signal. I'm pretty sure they did it because US gov't emails and IMs are for sure archived.

dathinab3• 10 months ago

Technically speaking WhatsApp is roughly second place on secure messaging behind Signal.

So while there are massive issues wrt. compliance and giving a US company control over all of this from a purely security choice they could have done way worse and still f*up compliance.

pasc18782• 10 months ago

In practice this is not that much different to what went before except that things happen more quickly.

Before people would go down the pub and have a discussion or in the corridor.

Things were never all discussed through official channels.

Now actually is probably more transparent as some of the WhatsApp messages are leaked and people can't deny them.

clort• 10 months ago

The short term problem is, that the government are responsible for sacking themselves in the short term - and those clowns just refused to, which is not the case for the current government who are replacements for the clowns who the electorate firmly sacked at their first opportunity.

So re your comment: 'For the UK govt its business as usual', not really.

You do not have to like the government of the day, but don't fall into the trap of believing that they are all the same.

teekert• 10 months ago

I submitted this some time ago [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45127521

soulofmischief• 10 months ago

Our governments have hoodwinked the population into believing that society needs to be surveilled by the government to prevent crime, and not the other way around. We're forgetting who signed off on this whole thing.

dmesg2• 10 months ago

The central problem here is this:

In the Physicists from 1961 (German: Die Physiker, F. Dürrenmatt) the central theme is that scientists cannot "uninvent" something. Encryption is here to stay. Mathematically proven. Period.

The criminals will just flock to the "real encryption" and not the honeypots/backdoored messengers as they are being caught. In the end word of mouth will spread: "This is safe, this is unsafe."

Just because a few Kremlin bots on Telegram are brainwashing people in the west, the west doesn't have to become North Korea.

Defending the innocent law abiding adult Joe, just wanting to send their honey pics in private is a distractor in this argument. I will not sacrifice my western standards just because 0.1% people are inherently evil.

ErigmolCt5• 10 months ago

Put the surveillance where the actual power lies. Public servants should be held to a higher standard of transparency, especially when mismanagement or corruption affects millions. Want trust? Show accountability.

Muromec• 10 months ago

when something goes wrong that blackbox should be decrypt-able so we can look at the logs and see what went wrong.

We always check the logs and when something goes wrong we vote for the box to explode

GuB-42• 10 months ago

Public servants have a job, outside of their job, they are just regular citizens with the same rights and duties as everyone else.

So, monitoring them of the job, sure, but they have the right for a private life. Or not, depending on the law...

It is a bit more complicated for high ranking official, where immunities and classified information come into play, and they don't really have 9-to-5 jobs. But for lower ranking public servants, like police officers, magistrates, mayors, etc... that would apply.

b3lvedere2• 10 months ago

I think i get what he's trying to achieve: To get the bad guys (faster) by disallowing things the bad guys can use to get away with stuff.

The slippery balance is also that the good guys of yesterday are the bad guys of today and vice versa.

But both never stopped development of better, weirder, stranger and scarier stuff that can both be used for bad or for good, whichever you choose. I highly doubt encryption will stop because they outlawed it. There will be even better development of encryption that will be even harder to detect if encryption was actually used.

em-bee4• 10 months ago

just a random thought, since AI can now simulate conversations, it can be used for steganography. you can hide the real conversation in a simulated one without effort.

ricardo81• 10 months ago

I'm definitely not one who thinks about these things deeply (as others surely do more), though the act of having a private conversation seems sacrosanct, why should distance or medium be a factor.

wodow• 10 months ago

Something I think is often missing in this evergreen debate: governments have banned encryption before, in amateur radio. See e.g. https://ham.stackexchange.com/questions/72/encrypted-traffic...

(Obviously, the difference is in number of users -- not many hams, and lots of internet users, and "a sufficiently large difference in quantity is a difference in kind")

voxlax• 10 months ago

I don´t see the relation to this debate. HAM Radio communications do not need encryption, as they have a fully different purpose. You would not discuss private/sensitive matters anyway as the whole thing is just a hobby/learning/experimentation or sport. Your life´s important decisions don´t depend on this type of communication. Besides, I think one of the most important motivations behind this restriction is to avoid misusing frequencies for commercial purposes.

sleepybrett4• 10 months ago

Uh, there is nothing stopping a crazy guy with a cell of white supremists in idaho for communicating with another sell of malitia guys in utah via ham. If I were said crazies I would certainly want to encrypt that traffic. Given a rural enough compound it might be one of the only ways that they can communicate, certainly starlink exists these days but you catch my meaning.

Ham is useful, there are things about it that make it DIFFERENTLY useful than the internet. (see also number stations)

jacquesm2• 10 months ago

You would not discuss private/sensitive matters anyway as the whole thing is just a hobby/learning/experimentation or sport.

You mean like certain medical issues? You really should tune into a HAM band one of these days.

schlauerfox• 10 months ago

It's contested, in the USA the spectrum is allocated so the FCC regulations seem to allow an abridgement of first amendment freedoms in exchange for use of the regulated spectrum. Is that constitutional? Why are broadcast airwaves censorsed, but the cable companies that were built with public right of ways contracted to private companies because they're natural monopolies allowed to swear on cable channels? It's not clear to me this is just.

int_19h2• 10 months ago

Note that this only applies to amateur radio bands. It's perfectly legal to encrypt your Meshtastic comms, for example (again, unless you transmit under ham rules).

raxxorraxor5• 10 months ago

Depending on the country and constitution, it very much is. And if not, it should be.

The construct of government with its many imperfections isn't able to parse and interpret any and all communication.

If he really believes that he should send all his correspondence to Putin and Trump and probably much worse for him: his constituents.

cs702• 10 months ago

What the Justice Minister means is that electronic privacy should not be a civil liberty. Perhaps he doesn't realize that making encrypted messaging illegal is the same as making it illegal to share sequences of decimal digits of transcendental numbers like e and π, which include every every possible sequence of digits encrypting a message?

hulitu2• 10 months ago

What the Justice Minister means is that electronic privacy should not be a civil liberty. Perhaps he doesn't realize

In time, you will find that what a politician means is dependent at least of: political party he is in, amount of lobby/bribes he/she was subjected to, time of day, weather, his souse's mood.

Don't make the priest follow the teaching of Jesus, it won't work.

sebtron• 10 months ago

From the European Convention on Human Rights [1]:

Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life edit
Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

[1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/European_Convention_for_the_P...

perihelions• 10 months ago

From the Constitution of the German Democratic Republic, Article 31:

"Postal and telecommunications secrecy are inviolable."

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Constitution_of_t...

epolanski2• 10 months ago

Same for Italian constitution.

But you know how it goes with law: all you need is a supreme-court equivalent to judge what are the boundaries and exact definition of those articles..

hopelite3• 10 months ago

Germany does not have what could be considered a constitution, or a Verfassung in German.

The article 31 is not even protected by the “Eternity Clause” that, ironically can simply be removed by the legislature.

But it seems relatively irrelevant anyways, as all western governments seem to just ignore all fundamental laws if it suits them, let alone regular laws, regardless of constitution or not. And that does not even go into the fact that the illegitimate EU just de facto supersedes all legitimate national laws.

ExoticPearTree• 10 months ago

> "Postal and telecommunications secrecy are inviolable."

So phone taps are illegal in Germany? Police can't record what you're talking on the phone?

sterlind• 10 months ago

the GDR phrasing is much stronger and less ambiguous than the ECHR one. however, given what we know of the Stazi I'm skeptical they honored it.

phkamp5• 10 months ago

Somehow you overlooked that Article 8 has a second clause, even though it comes right after the bit you quoted ?

2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

swader999• 10 months ago

They shouldn't have even bothered with the first part.

phkahler• 10 months ago

That doesn't say what kind of interference, nor does it say anyone is required to provide assistance to them.

ErigmolCt5• 10 months ago

But the key words here are "in accordance with the law" and "necessary in a democratic society." That's a pretty high bar, not a free pass.

ivan_gammel5• 10 months ago

There’s no such clause in current version (and it’s article 7, not 8).

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/treaty/char_2012/oj/eng

blitz_skull• 10 months ago

Genuinely curious, why must privacy extend to online?

Last week’s events have me pondering the real value of online anonymity in a civil society.

I understand encryption and privacy aren’t 1:1, but if one goes, so goes the other.

At any rate, I want to hear other opinions. While I agree with the right to privacy, I’m wondering if privacy in ALL contexts is a good and healthy thing.

ecshafer2• 10 months ago

Last weeks events were a huge tragedy. But lets assume mass spying and no encryption, how would that have stopped it? A schizophrenic with a knife, or a political extremist with a gun, isn't something that necessitates coordination.

f1shy• 10 months ago

Genuine question: why not?

To start an answer I would say is dangerous territory to say „online must not follow the rules of offline“. My expectantion would be as general principle „onlinity“ is irrelevant. As far as sensible of course.

michaelmrose• 10 months ago

Having a ready made list of everyone's thoughts on every topic and the ability to sift through every tedious mountain of data with software to classify everyone according to every sort of ideology would certainly be handy if your nation ever became a fascist dystopia.

You could end up having to not only not critique your personal Hitler but praise him to get the right score to work in civil service or not only not only not say pro lgbtq talking points but spout pro bigot positions to qualify as a teacher helping to create first the illusion then the reality of the universiality of these positions.

Imagine how well the French resistance would have gone if all the trouble makers or likelyoffenders had been shot preemptively!

scotty792• 10 months ago

You can ask yourself why privacy is beneficial at all?

And it's because revealing breaches of social etiquette might lead to conflicts and unrest between serfs. Which lower their economic efficiency in their service to landlords.

Online is not unique in any way. It even should have more privacy because people reveal too much voluntarily already leading to all kinds of unrest.

How many people's economic activity was disrupted because they couldn't keep their cheering of Charlie Kirk's demise in private for example?

simoncion2• 10 months ago

...why must privacy extend to online?

Because "online" is just as real as "offline"? It's all people communicating with other people.

In the US, I can do business under an alias, just so long as I'm not assuming that alias with the intent to defraud. In the US, I can anonymously drop a letter in a postbox to be sent anywhere in the US.

However, government agents can certainly discover my "wallet identity" in both of those situations with the application of some effort. Why would it be important to you that people doing business "online" must do that business in such a way as to make it require zero effort for a government agent to discover their "wallet identity"? Why would it be important to you that people who conduct their business electronically have far, far less privacy than people who conduct their business with paper and in-person appearances?

sleepybrett4• 10 months ago

Privacy in sealed mail is different than privacy when you are shouting on the street corner.

I think an interesting experiment would be to create a social platform where all identities must be verified and public and all messaging must also be public. If you could verify identities well enough, this would create a platform where everyone is saying everything knowing it's traced to their identity. Perhaps the information communicated on such a platform would be considered to have more weight than information spewed on pseudo and fully anonymous platforms.

arcxi• 10 months ago

I assume you refer to the killing, which was done offline with a physical weapon.

do you think less online anonymity would've prevented Lincoln's assassination too?

raxxorraxor5• 10 months ago

Genuinely curious, why must privacy extend to online?

Because governments lack the maturity to judge contents. You would subject private communications to mob justice of populist political discourse. It is not rocket science that it wouldn't work.

ivan_gammel5• 10 months ago

You are quoting outdated document. There’s the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union which was proclaimed in 2000 and came into force with Lissabon Treaty in 2009 [1].

In that document it’s article 7.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/treaty/char_2012/oj/eng

ta1243• 10 months ago

Everyone's post is private. Until there's a court order which allows it to be opened.

Everyone's phone call is private, until there's a court order

In principal I have no problem with a court order overriding privacy, it's been that way for centuries

godshatter• 10 months ago

If they get a court order then they can start trying to break the encryption.

ivan_gammel5• 10 months ago

There’s no regulation on content of the post, so you can encrypt your message, print it and send it by post. Equivalent of the court order in digital world is the permission to obtain whatever version of the content is available.

Mandating that all mail should be written in such a way that someone from the government could understand it, is clear overreach.

scotty792• 10 months ago

In practice there are physical limits on how much phonecalls or snail mails can be improperly publicized.

Online even the stuff that very rich companies struggle very hard to keep private regularly gets publicized in bulk.

You might think in terms of "medium is the message" so you can't directly transfer something that works in principle for one medium to another.

int_19h2• 10 months ago

But you're not obligated to make it easy for law enforcement to enforce any potential court orders, though. It's perfectly legal to install a safe that is impossible to open without destroying its contents, for example.

tokai6• 10 months ago

The minister was abused by his father during his childhood, and that has manifested itself in a low empathic response and a desire to force others to submit. I'm not being fastidious here, his behavior goes from head scratching to explainable when this fact is known, and not just in this case.

ktosobcy• 10 months ago

WTF is wrong with Danes/Denmark? o_O

em-bee4• 10 months ago

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark"

clemensnk• 10 months ago

Here at the computer science department in Aarhus, some of our professors and our head of department are doing their best to try to talk some sense into our politicians. See this post (apologies for linking to linkedin): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cs-au-dk_dkpol-eupol-krypteri...

Diego has been part of putting together this open letter from 500+ cryptography and cybersecurity researchers: https://csa-scientist-open-letter.org/Sep2025

kaliszad• 10 months ago

This is very laudable!

The letter's first page looks very low effort, which unfortunately is the first impression undermining the certainly large amounts of work people have invested in this. The note about needing a PhD could well be left to the form instead of sounding extremely elitist right on the first page. Yes, it's shallow and everything but do you want to be right or get your way?

ionwake8• 10 months ago

Denmark, is a great country, however even I notice problems here as there are in other countries. Corruption and poor decisions. For example a local government office has a brand new facade finish ( amongst other work) that has taken about 4 years to do, its an entire building. Tall buildings are banned in Denmark so its actually surprisingly imposing. Trouble is, they did not use the tax funds to improve the local school for children. I am not joking, its a literal portacabin. Yes there are normal schools in buildings, but the main primary school for this village, ( and bear in mind this is denmark where most things are still carefully constructed and beautiful), is 2 literal portacabins / part of a small modern house, in dire need of upgrading.

Im not saying the new government building is saurons tower, but there was no need to divert funds to improve it, it was just one of the buildings in a non descript village. I wouldnt normally care, but I know someone who goes to the primary school, and apparently it was a big upset that the funds for it went to this government building instead.

Before anyone thinks I am being mean to DK, a very similar thing happened in the UK, the local library that used to be in a large building got moved to essentially a backwater dark room in a terrible part of town, and the main building converted to bigger nicer officer for the local government.

Its a problem I am seeing all over europe.

Just sat badly with me.

EDIT > WTF everyone always so touchy. Everyone just relax ok this is a public forum.

arcfour3• 10 months ago

Maybe Denmark isn't as beautiful as you describe and you are simply biased.

bondarchuk2• 10 months ago

The scandinavian countries are widely upheld as some of the best and most civilized countries in the world second only to japan and switzerland. Sure countries are complicated affairs and we can bicker for years about these kinds of opinions, but it's not some kind of weirdo niche to think denmark is a far above-average country.

Svip2• 10 months ago

Tall buildings are banned in Denmark so its actually surprisingly imposing.

False. Buildings higher than 5 stories require municipal council approval (whereas normally it's a functional approval, not a political one), but that's only in Copenhagen. Other municipal councils do not have the same restrictions, and there are plenty of examples of tall buildings in Denmark.

The restriction in Copenhagen is historical, due to the fires that consumed the city; so to increase fire safety, buildings were height restricted. That most of Denmark otherwise don't have a lot of tall buildings is primarily due to a lack of demand.

ionwake8• 10 months ago

I know bro I am just keeping it simple for people who arent danish.

Thank you for the elaboration though

graemep• 10 months ago

As I read through the first two paragraphs of your comment I was thinking "that sounds like the sort of thing that happens here in the UK" and I have often though there is a general deterioration in the Europe (and as far as I know north America too).

Then I found you seem to think much the same.

nickslaughter024• 10 months ago

Denmark, is a great country

Is it? From the outside it looks like a nanny state where every piece of individualism is removed.

vonneumannstan• 10 months ago

Denmark, is a great country, however even I notice problems here as there are in other countries. Corruption and poor decisions. For example a local government office has a brand new facade finish ( amongst other work) that has taken about 4 years to do, its an entire building.

I'm sorry but when my own president is hard at work enriching himself and his family to the tune of Billions of dollars at the expense of the citizens here this sounds like a joke.

sleepybrett4• 10 months ago

I don't know if it's 'corruption' or just a different sort of 'common sense' that needs to be corrected. There is a reason that 'if you've got nothing to hide why not consent to the search' is ages old and still present.

You don't always have to assign corrupt intent to people who may just be ignorant.

bazoom422• 10 months ago

Tall buildings are banned in Denmark

This of course not true.

ionwake8• 10 months ago

Im simplifying the complex rules for the crowd , you didnt pick up on that but its ok bro I appreciate the clarification.

NullCascade• 10 months ago

One Swedish-Kurdish man in Iran who is working for the Iranian government is using Telegram/Signal and Monero to intentionally cause carnage in the streets of Sweden and has been attempting to expand to Denmark.

But instead of going directly after this man our tech inept governments are trying to do the mathematically impossible.

rockemsockem• 10 months ago

Right, to catch a predator managed to catch people without needing to backdoor stuff. These people are just lazy and incompetent, potentially intentionally.

tgv• 10 months ago

How would they go about that without violating other laws/rights? The state cannot act on rumors alone.

Yokolos• 10 months ago

Even worse, they're setting up Europe for a fascist takeover. To protect us. Just what?

You'd think we never had the Third Reich, Nazis or WW2 with how they're behaving.

modo_mario• 10 months ago

One would wonder why this doesn't lead into inquiry into the obvious other things things that made one singular such man capable of causing such disturbance.

rsynnott• 10 months ago

I am a little puzzled why Denmark cares so much about this. Most of the 'yes' countries were, as far as I can see, more or less taking a "yeah, okay, whatever" approach (hence a fair bit of wavering once Germany became a 'no'), but Denmark seems desperate to push it.

jaapz4• 10 months ago

Denmark seems to have a bit of a gang violence and organised crime problem, may be related

tokai6• 10 months ago

Not really. Its very minor compared to most other European countries.

guccihat• 10 months ago

The technical proposal behind this legislation is to enforce on-device AI analysis of all chat communication so your device can notify authorities.

This mass surveillance proposal is so dystopian and broken, I’m genuinely ashamed to be an EU citizen.

isaacremuant• 10 months ago

That corrupt man doesn't disclose his entire life nor has cameras in his home exposing how he acts at every second. He doesn't show how shady he is because he wants no privacy for others but transparency for himself.

The funniest thing is how this authoritarian excuse of a human being wants to make his 1984 world a thing worldwide, because he doesn't even care about the pretense of EU agreements. Not only is there no sovereignty but we should all follow his whims.

rdm_blackhole2• 10 months ago

This sort of politician is the reason people turn to the far right.

They see the clowns in power from the right and the left and either decide to completely removes themselves from the political scene or decide that blowing up the whole system is better. And who can blame them?

To me the fact that Chat Control is even entertained is basically a huge betrayal of all the people who want to live in a democracy.

tokai6• 10 months ago

He is a minister of a center-right wing government.

rdm_blackhole2• 10 months ago

Exactly my point. This sort of non-sense used to be part of the ideas expressed by people on the fringes of the political class not from center-right/center left parties.

NemoNobody• 10 months ago

The far right is about to try to take away all of America's guns, freedom of the press, speech, and the right to assemble. They have already essentially removed birthright citizenship for brown US Citizens that are the minor children of immigrants.

The far right is always infringing on liberty in a hope to bring the world backwards or stop some way society is changing - that is what the right is - traditional.

maxdo4• 10 months ago

A bit of context for Americans: the Europe is under a hybrid multi-vector attack from the Evil Axis (China, Russia, Iran, Hungary, etc.).

People are too occupied with ideas of their own comfort and liberty. For everyone who thinks this is such a basic black and white question...

We are on the doorstep of WWIII. China, working through Russia, Iran, Hungary, and others, has built a network of influence proxies.

They use liberty and security as tools to conduct hybrid attacks. Their goal is to undermine the unity of the West, one by one.

Look at the recent extremely well-coordinated multi-vector hybrid attack on Poland.

Some attack vectors:

1. Military vector: They sent military drones to monitor reactions—political, military, etc. It's a milary act but not strong enough to have a military response. Drones had Polish sim cards, and used Telegram protocol to mask their traffic to a simple chat.

2. Political Vector. Vote of no confidence. Once Ursula and the EU decided to respond asymmetrically, they deployed one of their assets, Hungarian Orbán. They tried to remove Ursula, who was advocating for a firm response.

3. Informational Vector. They also started distributing false flag conspiracy theories claiming it was Ukraine, not Russia, who sent the drone. It's a tactic of small bites and proxy attacks internally, spreading propaganda and false narratives.

This is just one of such attacks. Imagine yourself a government worker, trying to fight that. Where left and right your colleagues got bribed , threatent, etc. and you can't even find proofs against them. Your enemy on contrary, knows everything about everyone in their country.

ah12397d• 10 months ago

The only thing in Europe that got sabotaged was Nord Stream, and the current investigation focuses on Ukrainians who, according to the WSJ, were directed by Zaluzhnyi.

We might want to monitor Zaluzhnyi's messages.

Sorry, the Russia invasion is utterly wrong, but this kind of fear mongering is dangerous.

maxdo4• 10 months ago

oh yeah, 19 drones attacking Poland just to test things is just a joke, sure :)

maxdo4• 10 months ago

Read how Nord Stream was built first. It was shit show of a bribery, similar to how I outline before. And that bribery broke EU anti monopoly rule which dictate that no supplier should go above certain %.

So yeah, whoever did this, you should say thank you

nickslaughter024• 10 months ago

Their goal is to undermine the unity of the West, one by one
Imagine yourself a government worker, trying to fight that. Where left and right your colleagues got bribed , threatent, etc. and you can't even find proofs against them. Your enemy on contrary, knows everything about everyone in their country.

That's somehow an argument to outlaw secure communication so even your enemy can spy on your messages?

nickslaughter024• 10 months ago

Political Vector. Vote of no confidence. Once Ursula and the EU decided to respond asymmetrically, they deployed one of their assets, Hungarian Orbán. They tried to remove Ursula, who was advocating for a firm response.

Ursula faced a vote of no confidence (with 2 more in October) because she's unfit to lead EU.

Far right and far left in EU Parliament to file separate von der Leyen no-confidence motions at midnight (https://www.politico.eu/article/far-right-far-left-eu-parlia...)

jonathanstrange• 10 months ago

I don't disagree, but what's the relevance of this information for the topic at hand? The chat control proposal is for government-mandated scanning of devices and processing the information in a EU-wide data center close to Interpol.

Obviously, foreign spies and threat actors can continue to use encrypted communication. In the worst case for them, they can stop using the Internet and use burst-mode radio transmissions.

So what's your point?

maxdo4• 10 months ago

exactly, how do you fight if everyone except you know everything about even your citizen e.g. tiktok, and you know nothing ?

I'm not advocating, I'm just asking a question. what is a tactic if we are really on a brink of a world war? It's subject of debate, but what if the goverment truly believe this way?

themgt• 10 months ago

Ran across this interesting NYT article from 1908. After President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist, Teddy Roosevelt demanded action against anarchist publications being sent through the postal service. And yet he clarifies this does not apply to normal mail - "sealed documents" - explaining the government is "expressly forbidden to ascertain, what the purport of such messages may be":

The greater portion of his opinion is devoted to the question of whether, in the absence of any legislation by Congress, the Postmaster General has the right to exclude such publications. On this point his conclusion is: "The Postmaster General will be justified in excluding from the mails any issue of any periodical, otherwise entitled to the privilege of second-class mail matter, which shall contain any article constituting seditious libel, and counseling such crimes as murder, arson, riot, and treason." The Attorney General makes a clear distinction with reference to the authority of postal officials over sealed and unsealed mail matter. In conveying letters and newspapers to persons to whom they are directed, he says the United States "undertakes the business of a messenger." He adds: "In so far as it conveys sealed documents, its agents not only are not bound to know, but are expressly forbidden to ascertain, what the purport of such messages may be; therefore, neither the Government nor its officers can be held either legally or morally responsible for the nature of the letters to which they thus, in intentional ignorance, afford transportation."

https://www.nytimes.com/1908/04/10/archives/roosevelt-demand...

ErigmolCt5• 10 months ago

Fast forward to today, and we're somehow arguing that end-to-end encrypted messages (our modern sealed letters) should be scan-able "just in case."

ethbr12• 10 months ago

The purported difference now is that governments don't want to actually look that them... they just want to install a machine (that they control) that looks at all of them.

Completely different. /s

miohtama2• 10 months ago

Not scannable, but scanned. All of them.

jauntywundrkind• 10 months ago

Unfortunately the postscript to liberty being writ clear like this is quite dark. Merely a decadeatter Albert Sidney Burleson became postmaster general.

"Has been called the worst postmaster general in American history, but that is unfair; he introduced parcel post and airmail and improved rural service. It is fair to say however that he may have been the worst human being ever to serve as postmaster general -G. J. Meyer

This guy shows up time and time again in Hochshild's amazing American Midnight, to keep careful watch over & to ban various inconvenient political, civil, labor, racial, and anti-war folks from being able to send their letters. Empowered via the 1917 Espionage Act, by a Congress where many members quite loudly vociferously argued for it for letting the government shut down the left's ability to express problems of the world and a desire for a better world. Then as now (at least at POTUS level), to wish for a better state was perceived by the right as hating America, as a form of treason, as propaganda.

Burleson solicited post offices everywhere to send him anything suspicious. He also was a frequent at Wilson's Whitehouse, and would distribute postmaster positions in return for voting certain ways on bills. But in general, banning publications is the main of his legacy as a rotten evil fucker. He banned 15 publications in the first month after passage of the Espionage Act, largely for anti-war sentiment, and sent a huge huge huge chill through what journalism was permitted.

The foes of democracy are legion and oh have mercy, the snowflakes are back in power again. At war with and trying to run out of business a press that reports after them.

Apologies for my shitty post. I'm not worthy. Please please please read American Midnight. It's insane what this country was up to 100 years ago, how lopsided & vulgarly self-dealing & unjust the power was arrayed against the left & speech & progress & peace. Hopefully this trip around to the darker side of mankind is much shorter and much less a cooption of the state for political and economic exploitation.

red-iron-pine2• 10 months ago

dejoy is likely to usurp that title. or maybe not, if history is written by the victors and the trumpists annihilate truthful record keeping -- and they're sure trying

bsenftner• 10 months ago

Time to learn Navajo and other obscure languages. Then watch the fear propaganda as these dicks make foreign languages nobody speaks illegal.

josefritzishere• 10 months ago

Privacy for me and not for thee.

dartharva• 10 months ago

For a democratic leader to do this, there must be some nontrivial subset of their voter base who support it. In all this ruckus over Europe trying to ban encrypted communication I keep wondering - who the hell are the voters pushing for this?

bell-cot• 10 months ago

So long as you proclaim "to protect our children" (or whatever) loudly, >50% of voters will support anything that they don't really understand.

alluro22• 10 months ago

This "it's only right that we, the humble and fair politicians, are exempt from this forceful control we're exerting over everyone" aspect of ChatControl is beyond ridiculous.

I'm not usually of a "revolutionist" kind in the slightest, but, when you combine this small example to a lot of things currently happening across Europe and the US - it does increasingly seem like people in power are less and less wary of heavy and serious responsibility their positions hold to the people, and are more and more brazen when it comes to trying to isolate themselves from scrutiny over their self-profiting endeavours.

Historically, there were somewhat regular "correction" events happening somewhere sufficiently close, that made sure that responsibility is stuck in politician's minds for longer into the future, but it's been a long time since.

Edit: My comment is partially fueled by everything that's currently happening in Serbia (grand-scale systemic corruption), but I do think you can see similar movement in much more orderly countries in Europe as well, and all this is unconnected to ChatControl, but I see it as a small ripple from the same source.

I also dare say that current state of affairs in US has emboldened such people everywhere.

Nepal is probably not felt as close enough to have an effect.

daemin• 10 months ago

My response: "We must break with the totally erroneous perception that politicians' communications are private."

raxxorraxor5• 10 months ago

I think Bill Maher did a good summary about Europe getting worse in every perceivable way on civil liberties.

And people wonder why young people leave the old continent. Surely not only because of this, but the political class in Europe is more and more dysfunctional.

gorgoiler2• 10 months ago

The end game for these policies is, sadly, eminently viable. You’d have to treat your citizenship as if they were corporate employees: all phones under mobile-device-management, all laptops locked down and monitored by kernel level “agents”, and all network traffic running through traffic analysis. Say goodbye to any kind of home made computing devices or operating systems that don’t meet audit approval.

You could nudge this sort of thing into play by starting with e-commerce. No online shopping unless you’re using a Trusted OS. Ratchet up to cat videos and TV shows. Ratchet again to Trusted News. You’re most of the way there!

The “you can’t outlaw math!” crowd are kind of right but that argument assumes free and unencumbered end user devices, which, as crazy as it sounds, might not be a given in the particularly awful dystopian futures available to us right now.

Zak2• 10 months ago

The “you can’t outlaw math!” crowd are kind of right but that argument assumes free and unencumbered end user devices, which, as crazy as it sounds, might not be a given in the particularly awful dystopian futures available to us right now.

That future is already here for the substantial number of people who have only iOS devices. Even in the EU where Apple is forced to allow alternate app stores and direct installation of apps, the apps must be signed with a key that Apple can revoke. Google seems to be planning something similar for "certified" Android, and some important apps refuse to run on any other kind of Android.

I'm disappointed so many smart people in the tech world participated in this corporate power grab.

gorgoiler2• 10 months ago

Well said. And I am disappointed in myself as much as anyone. My only consolation is that I at least took a frontline part in making Linux, GNU, FreeBSD, and FOSS in general what it is these days, on the back-end.

— sent from my iPhone

ChrisArchitect• 10 months ago

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45242458

marginalia_nu• 10 months ago

The mechanism of rights makes a lot of sense in a constitution, to establish that these core principles of the legal code of Latveria and may never be trampled upon by subsequent laws, and then refer back to that as a judgement when evolving the law.

However, in recent years it's taken a life on its own and people all over the political spectrum are inventing new rights or denying established rights. At face value it seems like a punchy statement that this is a human right or that isn't a civil liberty, but there's usually nothing to back that up. It's nothing more than a vapid slogan used this way.

raffael_de• 10 months ago

Assuming a trustworthy government with an independent legal system, all communication should be accessible upon judicial decision. This is analogous to acceptance of search warrants and seizure of evidence including paper based documents and messages.

Then again governments often aren't trustworthy. Germany isn't even able to issue European Arrest Warrants as prosecution here is politically dependent¹. And accordingly I also kind of prefer to have my electronic communication cryptographically protected. But I'm not so naive as to believe that this is a solution. This is just treating a symptom which eventually gets worse if not addressed directly.

1: https://www.eurojust.europa.eu/news/landmark-ruling-european...

0xbadcafebee• 10 months ago

That's famously why all our mail gets read by the government, and all our phone calls are listened to, and all our homes' walls are transparent, right? Because privacy isn't a civil liberty?

nickslaughter024• 10 months ago

Is this discussed in Danish news?

ErigmolCt5• 10 months ago

Encryption isn't about hiding crimes; it's about protecting everyday people from surveillance, abuse, and censorship

epolanski2• 10 months ago

Serious question: why is Denmark so engaged on that topic?

alsetmusic• 10 months ago

I typically consider Nordic countries to be pretty enlightened, so this is surprising to me. Just goes to show how politicians everywhere are wrong about encryption.

bazoom422• 10 months ago

Presumably “enlightened” mens having the same opinions as you?

dathinab3• 10 months ago

is he aware that not having encrypted messaging will severely endanger the financial interests of Denmark companies?

I mean sure it's indirect.

But making them susceptible to industry espionage, planting false evidence (encryption also protects against spoofing) or blackmailing executives for dump reasons (idk. sexting in a adulterating manner) is something countries like Russia would do and would endanger financial interests of such companies.

And are Denmarks companies aware about that?

I mean there are so much more important reasons for encrypted messaging (e.g. investigative journalism) but "local companies and with that jobs" being endangered tends to move politicians.

djoldman• 10 months ago

It's interesting to think about support for laws that disallow actions as driven by the action itself or "something else." The something else is often the alleged failure or difficulty of enforcing other laws.

For example: if all encrypted messaging traffic was about innocuous trivialities, support for banning encryption would be absurd. The support for banning encryption isn't because people think encryption is bad, it's because governments propose that encryption makes it too difficult or expensive to enforce other laws like prohibition of CSAM, money laundering, etc.

Other examples: KYCAML, drug paraphernalia, Terry stops / stop and frisk, etc.

seydor• 10 months ago

Is it legal to invent a secret language with your friend and talk to each other in that language?

exabrial• 10 months ago

For him it would be. Everything he does should be monitored.

Daisywh• 10 months ago

Portraying encryption as a threat is a distortion of the very concept of “freedom.” It’s not about hiding, but about preserving a private space in the digital world just as it is in the physical world.

arbirk• 10 months ago

It seems all politicians have to through this. Encryption is either-or. Either it has no backdoors or it does not work for anyone including our financial systems

vanviegen2• 10 months ago

There may be some middle ground: only allow encryption that's expensive but possible to decode without the key. That would at least make dragnets impractical. Political activists and those holding corporate secrets would still be at risk though...

Hizonner• 10 months ago

And don't even get me started on envelopes, the terrorist's friends.

delichon• 10 months ago

Along with all of those irresponsible people who say things where they cannot be heard by a government microphone, or think things without saying them, implicity promoting false civil liberty.

natch2• 10 months ago

Is DHH aware of what his country is doing? The dude can communicate. If only he were on this.

jjgreen2• 10 months ago

Afraid not, too busy cheerleading racists like Christopher Yaxley-Lennon.

https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64

natch2• 10 months ago

I didn't see that name in that post so I don't see what you're talking about (and it seems highly inflammatory, toxic, misinformed, and off topic). But I suspect the concern for DHH is not so much race as culture.

Havoc• 10 months ago

Maybe all the ministers private communications should be posted publicly then if he’s so keen on having mystery parties inspected them without the senders/receivers consent

fredsted• 10 months ago

Danish politicians are famous here for their lack of knowledge and interest in IT-related subjects. Many danes have the uninformed "what are you hiding" perspective when it comes to privacy matters. Our government-built IT systems are also generally poor with many cost overruns. It's no surprise a Social Democrat politician would say something as ignorant as this.

yieldcrv• 10 months ago

Before digital artifacts, nations had to identify the individual, and get access to their writings to determine culpability.

With digital artifacts, nations have enjoyed the ability to go to third parties to for the last 40-50 years to get access to individual's writings as a shortcut.

This is just a return to the mean. It is not novel or controversial to say "identify the individual, and get access to their writings" in whatever legal way that nation prescribes. Good luck, since their devices may be locked, but going after the individual is real law enforcement

acd• 10 months ago

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

"Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."

apexalpha• 10 months ago

The Dutch constitution has an article giving everyone the right to private mail correspondence.

It was meant for physicial mail of course. I wonder if a judge would even see the difference.

A message is a message, regardless whether its deliver by electricity or a horse.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence

It guarantees that the content of sealed letters is never revealed, and that letters in transit are not opened by government officials, or any other third party.

I wonder how they are going to try to argue that a E2E encrypted message is not ‘sealed’.

throwaway89201• 10 months ago

I wonder if a judge would even see the difference.

A judge can't actually apply the constitution, as article 120 of the constitution forbids that, and The Netherlands doesn't have a constitutional court. In any case, most articles contain the phrase "except in cases determined by law". This means that the constitution is mostly a set of guidelines for politicians that practice civic hygiene, and not a tool to oppose bad laws. It's especially useless to delay and oppose fascists, as they'll just pass laws and/or state of emergencies without basis or changing the constitution.

Judges can apply the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically the right to privacy, but of course lawful exceptions can be made there as well as long as they are proportional and subsidiary. There's a good case to be made that Chat Control is neither.

willi595498792• 10 months ago

outlawing encryption for the population is bad. people have a right for privacy but i would be for making public all communication of politicians.

niemandhier• 10 months ago

I’d only back this if it also meant every civil servant’s communications, written or spoken and sent through any device, were archived from five years before taking office until five years after leaving. Not necessarily public, but fully accessible for prosecution. Any attempt to dodge this should carry jail time.

thewileyone• 10 months ago

By his logic, if I spoke to another in a language incomprehensible to him, I would be forced to divulge my conversation.

Denmark's Justice Minister calls encrypted messaging a false civil liberty

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