Denmark reportedly withdraws Chat Control proposal following controversy

https://therecord.media/demark-reportedly-withdraws-chat-control-proposal

by layer8 • 9 months ago

577 222 9 months ago

therecord.media

verdverm• 9 months ago

relevant south park clip? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGQS1AZus7E

jameslk• 9 months ago

More generally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RybNI0KB1bg

actionfromafar• 9 months ago

Lennart Betrayer - CEO :-D

laxd• 9 months ago

Let's rebrand and try again!

FinnKuhn• 9 months ago

The last chance for an agreement under Danish leadership is in December; the government in Copenhagen apparently preferred a compromise without chat control to no agreement at all. The current regulation, which allows the large platform providers to voluntarily and actively search for potential depictions of abuse, expires next spring after extension. It is precisely this voluntariness that Denmark's Minister of Justice now wants to codify within the framework of the future CSA regulation, which also contains a multitude of other, less controversial projects. [1]

Doesn't sound like it is over yet - only delayed.

[1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Denmark-surprisingly-abandons-p...

stavros• 9 months ago

As always...

zigzagger115• 9 months ago

That's why sites like this are so powerful. They can bring it back, and we can restart the email bombardment at any time.

This is such a hugely superior approach to the traditional single signer petition or mailing campaign. I think to should be studied by citizens groups worldwide.

tavavex3• 9 months ago

This is such a hugely superior approach to the traditional single signer petition or mailing campaign. I think to should be studied by citizens groups worldwide.

Why would mass-emailing be effective, though? This one instance strikes me as the exception, not the rule, especially in a world where I see calls to write to your local government all the time (and basically none of it results in anything)

It costs them nothing to ignore emails. There's nothing on your end of the argument to use as leverage. It doesn't put any barriers to just right click->deleting the emails, or answering with something akin to "Thanks for your concern, but this isn't about you and we know better than you, so please stay out of it", just worded in a vaguer and more polite way.

boltzmann-brain2• 9 months ago

They can bring it back, and we can restart the email bombardment at any time

I'm one of the founders of Stop Killing Games. Me and a large group of other people have gotten annoyed at this cycle and have taken it upon ourselves to make such laws impossible to implement in the future. We're organizing the campaign now - this is fully separate from SKG, but a bunch of the same people who helped SKG succeed, and a plan that takes into accounts the learnings from SKG.

We're looking for people such as politicians, lawyers (EU/US/UK law), journalists, and donors who want to see Chat Control dead forever. If interested, email stopkillinggames+hn @ google's email service.

I think the value proposition for VCs and C-suite is pretty obvious here, you get to keep the government's hands off your communications and internal systems, which is directly where Chat Control is headed. Even avoiding the cost of Chat Control compliance (dev work, devops, legal, ...) can easily run into 7 figures for a larger corporation, and 8-9 figures for the top players.

selcuka• 9 months ago

Doesn't sound like it is over yet - only delayed.

Politicians never step back. They only pause.

ericd2• 9 months ago

The "Yes"/"Maybe Later" school of governance.

vkou7• 9 months ago

That is the only way to run a government.

Consider for a moment what a government of "Yes"/"No Forever, without ever revisiting the question" would result in.

We aren't at the end of history.

churchill• 9 months ago

Which is, tbh, a bad-faith tactic for wearing down the electorate. It’s similar to how Brexit advocates kept the issue alive until they gained enough momentum to push it through. Nearly a decade later, most of the promised benefits haven’t materialized, and the UK has borne significant self-inflicted economic costs.

Growth has slowed to a crawl (just over 1%), trade friction has choked countless small exporters, and the “take back control” slogan now sounds hollow when irregular immigration is still higher than ever, while industries that relied on EU labor, say, healthcare or agriculture, are struggling.

Even though public opinion has shifted toward rejoining the EU, it could take a decade or more to rebuild the political will — and any return deal would likely come with less favorable terms.

KurSix5• 9 months ago

Definitely feels like something to keep watching closely

bobsmooth• 9 months ago

Withdraws it for now.

ginko• 9 months ago

Did they apologize for proposing it in the first place?

pajamasam• 9 months ago

They’re just withdrawing it “for now” and not making it “mandatory.” They will try to find a different route.

honkostani2• 9 months ago

Its like a ocean wave, crashing against the cliff, year in, year out, proposal after proposal, waiting for that final atrocity, justifying pushing it through. The white cliffs of Dover, with no plan on how to regain one day that land, once the crisis subsides. And no mechanism to prevent a permanent crisis, because the controls justify the manufacturing of endless crisis.

layer82• 9 months ago

Well, we do have the ECJ as a corrective: https://ccdcoe.org/incyder-articles/eu-data-retention-direct...

St0n3d• 9 months ago

Unfortunately the ECJ’s orders aren’t strictly followed and they recently pretty much indicated they could support an atrocious law like ProtectEU. Perhaps to save face.

boltzmann-brain2• 9 months ago

Not just. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45767226

themafia2• 9 months ago

Like labeling "public rejection" as "controversy."

What controversy? People just said no.

KurSix5• 9 months ago

This is poetic and painfully accurate

tokai3• 9 months ago

It's interesting that Peter Hummelgaard's former party comrade Henrik Sass Larsen recently got 4 months of prison for possession of child porn; 6200 pictures and 2200 videos.

So we are to believe Hummelgaard wants to protect children by enabling vast surveillance, so all the bad offenders out there can get ... 4 months in prison.

Its not really adding up. And he still hasn't presented any argument for the thing except that you are pro child abuse if you don't agree with him. I'm at the point where I hope he's corrupt and its not just all about power for him.

zigzagger115• 9 months ago

Is that out of line with similar offenses in Denmark?

hsbauauvhabzb• 9 months ago

I’m not sure how punishments are calculated, but surely a former politician pedophile remains dangerous - even if they don’t abuse children directly they will have residual power that they can use to harm children. Or maybe the low sentence is because of his existing power.

burnerzzzzz9• 9 months ago

The judge noted that given the publicity of the case, Henriks true penalty would be living in a country of 6 million people that all know his face and that he is a pedophile.

You don’t have to worry about him doing anything in Politics again. This isn’t the US after all…

port113• 9 months ago

Directive 2011/92/EU article 5.2 would suggest no less than 1 year of imprisonment. Depending on how kindly you read the other articles, and given how much pornography instances he had, I'd argue for more.

hoppp2• 9 months ago

Chat control is surveillance for plebs but not politicians. They want to hide their cp and shift attention to the lower class.

deaux2• 9 months ago

As a politician his comrade Henrik Sass Larsen would've been exempt from Chat Control anyway, surely?

rokkamokka• 9 months ago

Yeah, it's bad. Like convicted rapists not serving their sentences and going on to take political office.

Msurrow• 9 months ago

What’s really laughable about this is that they wanted politicians to be exempt from Chat Control regulation. As if politicians never do anything wrong.

If CC were ever implemented it should have a x year trial period where ONLY policymakers should be monitored.

Jusus, what a shit show from DK government.

ochrist• 9 months ago

As a Dane I am ashamed of the current government, but I didn't vote for them. Hopefully we'll get a more liberal government next year. But a lot of people seems to think that more surveillance means less crime. Problem is that this has not been proven.

KurSix5• 9 months ago

Yeah, when the punishment for thousands of images and videos is just four months, it really puts the whole "we need mass surveillance to protect kids" narrative under a harsh light

martini333• 9 months ago

Does anyone know if the "Borgerforslag" had an impact?

https://www.borgerforslag.dk/se-og-stoet-forslag/?Id=FT-2115...

https://www.ft.dk/da/aktuelt/nyheder/2025/09/borgerforslag-n...

tokai3• 9 months ago

Consideration of the proposal was moved to the 25th of November. So no it didn't reach a point where it could have any impact. I don't remember a single borgerforslag managing to have any impact though. Even if they made it to parliament in time.

stinkbeetle5• 9 months ago

If I was a conspiracy theorist I might think that the ruling class who so desperately want these kinds of powers are intentionally dividing nations and breaking down social cohesion so the populace must turn to the governments for protection. They're hoping to create societies where the people will beg them to scan private messages rather than to demand rights.

Give it another 10 years the way things are going, and I'm sure it will be back.

lysace5• 9 months ago

In practice it's a combination of:

a) wanting to soon expand this scheme to catch criminal gang communication (violent narco-related crime is exploding in e.g. some northern EU countries) [center-right goal]

b) wanting to make people more nervous about what they post online (immigration vs crime etc is a hot topic that many want to cool down). [center-left goal]

I suppose that there might also be some naive idealists that primarily care about the stated goal.

stinkbeetle5• 9 months ago

In practice it is entirely about wanting to expand the power of the state and cement its supremacy over the rights of the individual.

Those other things are a means to this end. They would be extremely happy for there to be more crime and more unrest about immigration if it meant they could seize powers like these.

tavavex3• 9 months ago

Give it another 10 years the way things are going, and I'm sure it will be back.

I'm giving it 10 months or less. The rate at which things are worsening (in most aspects, not just this) seems to be rapidly climbing from my point of view.

willmadden• 9 months ago

I don't think sockpuppet, aspiring actor to politician EU governments will be around in 10 years. People are waking up.

themafia2• 9 months ago

must turn to the governments for protection.

It's so they can sell you out to corporate interests more effectively. It's a modern day fiefdom.

HPsquared• 9 months ago

Deus Ex intro scene has a good line on this... "In the end, they'll beg us to save them".

jonbiggums22• 9 months ago

The main purpose is to identify any nascent organization of political opposition to the status quo so it can be destroyed in its infancy with a minimum amount of resources. It will be used to solve some crimes too but solving crimes still involves a lot of manpower (expensive) and if they solved crime people would be less supportive of expanding surveillance powers even further so you don't really want to do a great job at that.

zero0529• 9 months ago

I don’t trust Peter Hummelgaard at all. The way he is pushing for this law seems suspicious and I am wondering if there is a third party nudging him to pursue it. Maybe promising some position in the EU parlament.

Grikbdl• 9 months ago

His own party has a history of totalitarian initiatives. This is the "surveillance is freedom" party. He was surely getting pressured, but from within.

ranger_danger• 9 months ago

Why does the government think it is their job to save people from themselves in the first place?

johnisgood• 9 months ago

The weird thing is that even many people (citizens) believe this.

hoppp2• 9 months ago

Good. I was tired of it. Denmark is a great place to live but chat control wtf

ineedasername4• 9 months ago

I’m continually astounded that so many people, faced with a societal problem, reflexively turn to “Hmmm, perhaps if we monitored and read and listened to every single thing that every person does, all of the time…”

As though it would 1) be a practical possibility and 2) be effective.

Compounding the issue is that the more technology can solve #1, the more these people fixate on it as the solution without regards to the lack of #2.

I wish there were a way, once and for all, to prevent this ridiculous idea from taking hold over and over again. If I could get a hold of such people when these ideas were in their infancy… perhaps I should monitor everything everyone does and watch for people considering the same as a solution to their problem… ah well, no, still don’t see how that follows logically as a reasonable solution.

usernomdeguerre• 9 months ago

The issue is that there is a place where this model ~is working. It's in China and Russia. The GFW, its Russian equivalent, and the national security laws binding all of their tech companies and public discussion do exactly these things in a way that has allowed their leadership to go unchallenged for decades now.

The rest of the world isn't stupid or silly for suggesting these policies. They're following a proven effective model for the outcomes they are looking for.

We do ourselves a disservice by acting like there is some inherent flaw in it.

sureglymop• 9 months ago

How ~is it working there though? Is there less CSAM going around in these places?

orbital-decay• 9 months ago

You're responding to a completely different thing:

many people, faced with a societal problem, reflexively turn to (total surveillance)

It's not about the malicious elites. These societal problems surveillance keeps being pushed for never get fixed in either China or Russia. Yet people (not just politicians) keep pushing for it or at the very least ignoring the push. A decade+ after the push, things like KYC/AML regulations are not even controversial anymore, and never even were for most people. Oh, these are banks! Of course they need the info on your entire life because how else would you stop money laundering, child molesters, or shudders those North Koreans? What, are you a criminal?

And of course you somehow manage to blame the usual bad guys for something that happens in your society, because of course they're inherently evil and are always the reason for your problems. Guess what, the same often happens there and they copy your practices. Don't you have your own agency?

The reality is that the majority in any place in the world doesn't see privacy, or most of their or others' rights for that matter, worth fighting for. Having the abundancy and convenience is enough.

AnthonyMouse3• 9 months ago

The GFW, its Russian equivalent, and the national security laws binding all of their tech companies and public discussion do exactly these things in a way that has allowed their leadership to go unchallenged for decades now.

Isn't this exactly the argument for never, ever doing it?

xaxaxa123• 9 months ago

those are not democracies. thats why unchallanged. if chalanged you might fly out of the window or disappear for some years for "re-education".

Lio2• 9 months ago

Are you seriously trying to suggest that monitoring of all private messages in Russia and China has stopped child abuse images from being shared?

That is preposterous.

We dismiss the suggestion of removing the right to privacy precisely because it doesn’t stop these crimes but it does support political repression.

The crimes go on, only criticism of the government for failing to address them is stopped.

EDIT: the more I reread your post the more I suspect this might be exactly the point you are making. Sorry, too subtle for me first thing in the morning. Need more coffee.

ulrikrasmussen• 9 months ago

But in those countries the intended goal is not just to stop CSAM, but primarily to censor communications and suppress the opposition from voicing their opinion. If you still want to give our politicians the benefit of doubt, then they don't, after all, want to actually censor communications in the same way to destroy democracy.

This is not because I support their mass surveillance proposal, I am strongly against it. I think that the politicians are naive (maybe even to the point of warranting the label stupid) and ignore the huge risks that exists of future governments to start using the mass surveillance platform, once it is in place, to start doing actual censorship. I am also extremely worried about the slow scope creep that will inevitably result from this; today it starts with CSAM and terrorism, next year it is about detecting recruiting of gang members, and in a couple of years it is about detecting small-scale drug transactions.

purple_turtle• 9 months ago

The rest of the world isn't stupid or silly for suggesting these policies

I know that. The problem it is evil, not that it is stupid and silly.

The whole point is that I do not want to give government power over me like it happened in China and Russia.

With "think about children" as smokescreen.

wongarsu• 9 months ago

That just sounds like advocating for these policies is inherently undemocratic, in a Western understanding of democracy. Which is even worse than the policies simply being ineffective at their stated goals. Leadership being challenged is an essential part of our (stated) government system

dev_l1x_be• 9 months ago

Yes it had a great impact on political opposition. Such a weird coincidence that the politicians who want to keep their unlimited power indefinietly supporting a way of catching opposition early.

I guess this is what we need in the West too. Lets just cement the current ruling class in for decades.

ivan_gammel2• 9 months ago

I don't know about China, but in Russia private conversations do not trigger immediate response and they do not control every possible means of communication. They simply do not have capacity to investigate every violation - too many people talk negatively about the government and ongoing events, so use reactive approach. People may get in trouble while being searched on the border crossing or after being reported by someone, but it is hardly different from border searches in USA. Things may change with their new messenger and disruption of WhatsApp and Telegram there (Russia just started blocking SMS verification codes making registration there difficult).

ineedasername4• 9 months ago

Really? It’s working? No crime, no abuse, it has stopped perfectly or near so compared to other countries all of the things, like CSAM, that proponents want it to?

Your comment is precisely what I mean when I said people end up fixating on #1 to the exclusion of #2.

Yeul4• 9 months ago

Right there are no pedos or child abuse in Russia and China? I kinda doubt it.

pessimizer• 9 months ago

This is simply not true, this is Western paranoid fantasy. It's also the kind of fantasy that allows escalation of surveillance and censorship. You should look up the "missile gap."

Also, Russian and especially Chinese leadership doesn't go unchallenged. Chinese leadership has had many transitions. While Putin has squatted on the leadership of Russia for a very long time now, it isn't because he's not popular, and he's forced to do a lot of things he'd rather not do because of pressure on his leadership.

How do the neoliberal rulers in the West stay on top with extreme minorities of popular support, like in France or the UK? Why does popular opinion have no effect on the politics of the US*, and why are its politics completely run by two private clubs with the same billionaire financial supporters (that also finance politics all over the rest of the West)? How do they do it without massive surveillance, censorship and information control? Or a better question: how can we be given the evidence of massive surveillance efforts and huge operations dedicated to censorship and information control, over and over again, and still point to the East when we talk about the subject? Isn't that "whataboutism"?

* "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595

npteljes2• 9 months ago

EDIT: I improved my comprehension, and it looks like I agree actually, not disagree.

I agree, it's a great, proven tool to do away with political enemies, and to selectively enforce the law, for whatever motivation.

I just don't understand what you mean by

We do ourselves a disservice by acting like there is some inherent flaw in it.

We (as in, "the people") don't do any disservice for us by opposing such an effort. Specifically because we are also looking at what goes on in Russia and China to name a few. Authoritarian regimes do "work", but don't, generally, want that kind of working over here in Europe for example.

red-iron-pine• 9 months ago

"proven effective model" -- lol what?

ekianjo• 9 months ago

It's working. But that's at the expense of individuals. Unless you consider people are just meat working for the all powerful state.

tempodox• 9 months ago

We do ourselves a disservice by acting like there is some inherent flaw in it.

The inherent flaw is: It is despotic and only serves despots and their minions, at the cost of oppressing the majority of people.

sshine• 9 months ago

In the 2000s a law was passed in Denmark that allowed for extensive logging of internet traffic.

But the ISPs couldn't implement it in a practical way and essentially refused until they were given something doable. That ended up, in some cases, being "register every 500th TCP package" (or similar; it might've been DNS lookup).

At the same time, if the police wanted actual digital surveillance, they'd just contact the ISP and say "Hey, can we get ALL the traffic for this one person who is under suspicion?" and the ISPs would, in some cases I'm familiar with, comply without a court order. So there was a clear path of execution for actual surveillance while at the same time this political circus made no sense.

Imagine you're surveilling a place for criminal activity and you're recording one second of audio every 8 minutes. Surely gold nuggets are gonna leak out of that.

andersa• 9 months ago

As though it would 1) be a practical possibility

Well that's kind of the thing. With AI it is. In theory, they can now monitor all of us at the same time on a scale never before thought possible. The time of "big brother has better things to do than monitor you specifically" is over.

ineedasername4• 9 months ago

I think the O^n problem of attention & memory means that with AI it still really isn’t all that possible either.

Imustaskforhelp3• 9 months ago

Regarding #2 Be effective:

I have always felt like what these services would do is to push towards things like matrix/signal etc. and matrix is decentralized as an example so they can't really do chat control there but my idea of chat control was always similar to UK in the sense that they are gonna scare a lot of people to host services like this which bypass intentionally or unintentionally this because if they bypass it, they would have to pay some hefty fees and that possibility itself scares people similar to what is happening in the UK itself.

VPN's are a good model maybe except that once they get on the chopping block, they might break the internet even further similar to chinese censorship really. Maybe even fragmenting the internet but it would definitely both scare and scar the internet for sure.

officehero• 9 months ago

"...talking 5 minutes with the average voter" and all that. Ironically, lots of these people are meanwhile fine with "AI glasses" being used everywhere. They just haven't thought it through. What if a pedophile wears them?

consp• 9 months ago

Funny thing is that people are all ok with reading chats but as soon as you touch their mail they go apeshit. (Note: it is officially illegal to open mail not addressed to you, even for law enforcement unless they have a very specific court order)

phero_cnstrcts• 9 months ago

people are all ok with reading chats

Eh, no?

miohtama4• 9 months ago

It's because European socialist heritage.

Stasi, from East Germany, had 2% of its citizens as spies to "read and listen to everybody."

"Between 1950 and 1989, the Stasi employed a total of 274,000 people in an effort to root out the class enemy."

There were less social problems back then. Better times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

Now we just do the same, more efficiently, with AI spies.

BSDobelix7• 9 months ago

It's because European socialist heritage, Stasi, from East Germany, had 2% of its citizens as spies to "read and listen to everybody."

Have you ever heard of the Red Scare "McCarthyism" or the Patriot Act? The EU is the opposite of East Germany, nothing was inherited; they were robbed and left behind.

athrowaway3z• 9 months ago

There is a way to once and for all prevent this.

More IT people in politics.

The mass-surveillance proponents will always exist in small numbers, but it gets revived every other month because the number of ignorant politicians receptive to the idea is a function of their ignorance and malformed understanding of reality.

But that isn't their fault.

It's the magic tech companies are selling - and it's knowledgeable individuals who have to effectively communicate and explain bullshit.

Yeul4• 9 months ago

Right the IT people who work for Google and Facebook and would sell their own mother for stock options.

Luckily people who spend all day looking at screens make for notoriously bad politicians.

9dev4• 9 months ago

I think a lot of this is rooted in the basic world view people have. Those with a conservative mindset will think of humans as fundamentally flawed, misguided creatures that need to be contained and steered so they don’t veer of the path, which they are naturally inclined to; while those with a liberal mindset consider humans to be inherently kind and only misguided by circumstances and their environment.

Most people can pretty clearly relate to one of these perspectives over the other, and it’s pretty clear what actions follow from that.

closewith3• 9 months ago

Poe's law strikes again. This has to be satire, right?

zenmac• 9 months ago

Those with a conservative mindset will think of humans as fundamentally flawed, misguided creatures that need to be contained and steered so they don’t veer of the path, which they are naturally inclined to; while those with a liberal mindset consider humans to be inherently kind and only misguided by circumstances and their environment.

It is also this mindset of wanting to micromanage things/people in hope for better performance. Those are the usually the ones pushing for scanning people's private messages. People like Stalin and Mao would love stuff like that. The urge to micro-manage is a very band-aid type of solution and not dealing with complexity of the situation.

graemep3• 9 months ago

That is at best simplistic, and at worst completely inaccurate.

It is common for "liberal" governments, as in the UK at the moment, who are inclined to pass censorship, surveillance and control (of people's lives) laws. It is also common for "conservative" governments to do the same.

What is very common is for people to think themselves and people like themselves to be naturally kind and people unlike themselves as fundamentally flawed.

BoxOfRain• 9 months ago

I think that's a little simplistic, I have liberal (in the British English sense) views specifically because I think humanity is fundamentally flawed. If we are all flawed particularly when it comes to wielding power over others, it's self-evident in my opinion that governments should be limited and the total power any individual or institution can amass should have a hard ceiling. I see explicit anti-authoritarianism as a necessary counterweight to our flawed nature, every exercise of political power is potentially harmful but through the ideas developed in the Enlightenment it can at least be contained and controlled.

Humans are inherently flawed and they're inherently kind. We're evolutionarily primed for competition and cooperation. Antisocial behaviour can be both inherent and environmental. I feel you might be setting up a false dichotomy when the motivations for political beliefs are often pretty complex and varied.

KoolKat232• 9 months ago

These are American boxes. Skewed by American culture. Simplistic to the absurd extent where it can mean the tail leads the dog i.e. people will adopt some viewpoint they're actually at odds with deep down. More tribalism than any fundamental ground truth.

17186274404• 9 months ago

Those with a conservative mindset

I have.

will think of humans as fundamentally flawed, misguided creatures

I do.

that need to be contained and steered so they don’t veer of the path

No. When people are misguided that will even more apply to those in power and with weapons. The fact that I view everyone as likely misguided means nobody should have any say over the other.

The modern trend to frame conservatism and authoritarianism as "the same thing" is very bad and leads to the normalization of authoritarianism.

thefz• 9 months ago

I’m continually astounded that so many people, faced with a societal problem, reflexively turn to “Hmmm, perhaps if we monitored and read and listened to every single thing that every person does, all of the time…”

.. and stored! Which is the worst part, IMO, because once you have a record it's only a matter of time until it reaches the wrong hands.

igleria• 9 months ago

wish there were a way, once and for all, to prevent this ridiculous idea from taking hold over and over again

"Ideas are bulletproof, Mr Creedy". It's valid for good and bad ideas.

Yizahi2• 9 months ago

The real root cause of many societal problems is that a significant portion of the population everywhere across the world is either unable or unwilling to think more than one step ahead. This why I believe most dumb decisions are voted for. One immigrant was bad? Lets ban all immigrants. One criminal slipped the police? Lets allow spying on his chat and catch him. Etc.

People refuse to think ahead, or simply can't.

Yeul4• 9 months ago

Countries like Denmark are civilised and do spend literally billions on trying to protect and nourish children. And it is a credit to these nations and the people who dwell in them.

But the reality is that there will always be a scumbag dad who decides to molest his daughter.

HN assumes evil but this is a "road paved with good intentions" kind of deal.

dingdingdang• 9 months ago

I agree, the ghost of Stalin is right behind the curtain waiting for a 2nd, 3rd, 4th chance at making it work ("oh, no but this time we will REALLY get it right and eliminate only all the REAL enemies of the people")

KurSix5• 9 months ago

It's like surveillance logic eats itself in the end. What really gets me is how often these proposals skip over the part where we ask whether they actually work

fifticon• 9 months ago

There is a different problem at play behind this. There are strong lobbying efforts that want this tech/system, for their own reasons which are not being advocated to the public. At the same time, the lobbying forces behind this are pushing a random assortment of "popular" reasons to implement it - "think of the children/vegetables/climate". All this crap is not being driven by grassroots movements. To the extent those are involved, they are being manipulated and sheepherded. A lot of politics, if not all of it, are driven by real reasons separated from the methods used to push it through. See Brexit, MAGA, and a lot of other crap :-/. As happens in other countries, I see the politicians in my own country implementing a lot of random policies that have no popular support, but is quite relevant to some inner circle and network of policitians and their friends.

DirkH• 9 months ago

No silly, politicians specifically will exempt from such monitoring. So duh, not every single person will be monitored.

kragen• 9 months ago

For now. It will return unless we end the careers of the politicians who were grasping for such absolute surveillance powers.

burnerzzzzz9• 9 months ago

HN is being affected by the American love of conspiracy once more. In reality:

Danes trust their state - for good reason. But this is obviously taking it too far.

Its not that Peter Hummelgaard is trying to create a spy state. He just doesn’t understand tech.

Simple as that.

Argonaut998• 9 months ago

If you are so sure about that why wouldn’t they make it a domestic law instead of an EU wide law? I’m not American nor Danish and I certainly do not trust my government. Kind of naive - no one should trust their government in this day and age.

It’s also convenient that Denmark is essentially the US’ eyes and ears in Europe, who even spied on other nations for them.

burnerzzzzz9• 9 months ago

Having a largely non corrupt government that enjoys the trust of the general population yields benefits on all levels of society. Its a big part of the reason these countries are the happiest and healthiest.

BSDobelix7• 9 months ago

Danes trust their state - for good reason
>Nordic Waste is owned by the family of Torben Østergaard-Nielsen, reported to be the sixth richest person in Denmark. Last week, the Danish Ministry of the Environment issued an injunction against Nordic waste, and yesterday (22 January 2024) the company was declared bankrupt. The company has declared that this ends Nordic Waste’s liabilities.

https://eos.org/thelandslideblog/nordic-waste-1

Blind trust always gets betrayed, and all the Scandinavian countries have closed their eyes for too long; I want Olof Palme back.

Its not that Peter Hummelgaard is trying to create a spy state. He just doesn’t understand tech.

Oh nooo that poor little guy, cant even think 5 minutes into the future, he's 42 not 80.

codingbot3000• 9 months ago

Olof Palme? The socialist who squeezed tax payers out like lemons, and a bit more?

ghusto• 9 months ago

It sounds like they're like the Dutch. The government is trusted because they've been shown to be trustworthy, but they are always accountable. If something dodgy happens, people are quick to point it out and demand action.

So it's not blind trust. I understand why Americans are so mistrusting of their government, it's because they are untrustworthy. The mistake is thinking everywhere in the world is like that.

burnerzzzzz9• 9 months ago

Nordic Waste and Olof Palme seem like quite random unrelated references. Sweden and Denmark are different countries btw.

The public debate in Denmark clearly shows that it’s difficult for non technical people to understand the limits of tech. Regardless of age.

KurSix5• 9 months ago

Protecting children is critically important, but turning every citizen into a potential suspect by default? That's not justice, that’s just lazy policy design. Honestly, this feels like one of those rare moments where political pressure and public backlash actually worked...

tomasphan• 9 months ago

“Protecting children” is a red herring anyway. It’s never actually about the children, as they are more protected than ever and statistically it’s the safest ever in human history. I’d actually argue that children need less protection and more freedom.

aljgz• 9 months ago

From first person experience, once a society creates a surveillance state, to protect whatever, an inevitable avalanche starts.

A new game will emerge in which the best players are the ones who excel at finding secrets of others and use them as leverage. We had a president on national TV threating a challenging candidate that he will reveal their secrets... Think about that for a moment and you'll find so many wrong things that this implicitly admits to.

The disease was a blessing compared to the complications of the cure.

Nations like to hope things won't happen to them.

notepad0x903• 9 months ago

Care to provide an example? Just trying to be objective.

Historically, nearly all states have been surveillance states (including early America). all that has changed in the last ~30 years is technology (capability), and public attitude.

Mail snooping has been around as long as mail has been around. Warrantless wiretaps on telphone lines were around in just about every country that started having telephones, including the US. AT&T's NSA listening room (the company that invented telephones) isn't unique or special. Book ciphers were invented because snooping courier's messages was so common.

The NSA didn't build a Yottabyte-scale datacenter for no reason either.

I'm not disagreeing with your view, I'm just saying that the anti-surveillance sentiment is particularly unique to the cultural "West", and to the post-WW2 generations.

bratwurst30004• 9 months ago

for example ones porn history could be used against that person if he she wants to go for public office. So there is a chilling effect for watching porn. Politics are dirty allready but the way down is deep.

port113• 9 months ago

This is disingenuous as a counter-argument because it's never been possible at this scale — perhaps excepting the Stasi. The sentiment has arisen because:

1) yes, people are more likely to fight it.

2) it's being done at an unprecedented and very intrusive scale.

Wiretapping required more labor on all fronts. Mail snooping the same.

If the "East" isn't fighting this, it might simply be because they see no recourse with their less democratic institutions. (I'm borrowing from you for this last point, I'd never presume the West to be as democratic as we'd like to believe.)

thrance• 9 months ago

I don't think a surveillance state is the root cause of authoritarianism, in that sense I believe it is a slippery slope fallacy. I am still very much against this kind of mass surveillance, simply I think this rhetoric is doing everyone a disservice.

We don't get authoritarianism without an actual will from a group of people with enough power and support to achieve it. Mass surveillance is simply a milestone on their path to oppression.

bratwurst30004• 9 months ago

what people dont get about mass surveilance is that big systeme are easy corrupted. for example if I want privat data about peoplw from police or assurance or state office there is a way to get them with money and connections.

So if mass surveilance is implemented it would be missused for personal benefit of whoever has the money and the possibility

Weloveall• 9 months ago

In Denmark our government don't know shit about anything else. One day they say one thing and next day another.

zigzagger115• 9 months ago

I was flagged (bizarrely) because I was asking for help in propagating another website like this for similar ends. Joachim however reached out to me. he's working on an open-source model of his website.

Denmark reportedly withdraws Chat Control proposal following controversy

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