cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37443248
Answer
Question no. 1425 (General part) from the Danish Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee:
“Will the minister elaborate on the minister’s statement to TV2 on the 21st?”
August 2024, where the minister says: "We have to break with the totally mistaken notion that it is every man’s freedom to communicate on encrypted messaging services
(…)”?”
Answer:
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 access to.
Therefore, we, as a government, will also strengthen the police’s capabilities in the area of decryption, of course under appropriate legal guarantees, as is also the case today. In addition, the Ministry of Justice has The Criminal Justice Committee has just started working on a terms of reference that will look at the challenges that technological developments present to the police investigation, including the use of encrypted messaging services.
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 proposed regulation contains rules on obligations for certain online services to minimize the risk of their services being misused for online child sexual abuse, and the services can, if necessary, be required to track down, report, remove and block access to material showing sexual abuse of children.
It’s taken only about 35 years for the “free” countries of Europe to adopt the same mindset that the Eastern Bloc used to have. In large parts of Germany, for example, people can still remember how it was when you could expect your government to listen in on any and every private conversation. It wasn’t good.
It’s for the same reason. China is starting to dominate the global economy and European countries have to protect theirs. It’s unbelievable that they believe that it is a good idea.
We must break with the totally erroneous perception that ostensibly democratic governments can be trusted.
We need to do away with the erroneous perception that there is a safe way to break encryption only for the government. That actually IS an erroneous perception
What is actually going on with denmark? What is their problem with privacy? Have they always been like that?
I don’t know about Denmark, but e.g. in Sweden tax declarations are considered public information. In many areas in the Netherlands, you are able to view the complete ground floor of houses from the street. The idea of privacy differs between cultures.
Nonetheless, I’m convinced every minister of justice would state the same, even in the most privacy fokussed countries.
Nonetheless, I’m convinced every minister of justice would state the same
You are right. But that only shows how hard they are trying to destroy democracy now as the EU and many countries’ constitutions consider privacy and the ability to confidentally communicate privately a basic human right.
References:
EU convention on Human Rights: “The European Convention on Human Rights protects the right to respect for private life, the home and correspondence. This includes protecting the privacy of messages, phone calls, and emails. Governments can only interfere with these rights when it is specifically allowed by law, and done for a good reason – like national security or public safety.”
Danish constitution: “§ 72 The dwelling shall be inviolable. House search, seizure, and examination of letters and other papers, or any breach of the secrecy that shall be observed in postal, telegraph, and telephone matters, shall not take place except under a judicial order, unless particular exception is warranted by statute.”
All those morons could at least openly talk about the fact that they want to change basic constitutional rights. But they don’t as people could realize what they are doing then. So it’s always the same bullshit of bending and bending laws until they break (or courts object), then pretend to be totally surprised, turn around and try the exact same shit again.
Not only tax declarations, but a lot of public info on car ownerships, court cases, personal address, and so on. “Doxxing” is not really a thing, in the same sense, here. But there used to be somethings that were completely off limits, like contents of postal mail. That used to be considered very much a private thing. Until recently.
It’s happening all over Europe and the US, but especially Europe. Police were used to being able to eavesdrop on any sort of communication. This becomes ever less possible, while at the same time, you have more and more crimes that are committed solely by communicating and can’t be prosecuted or even detected without massive internet surveillance. I think the US commitment to “free speech”, freedom of information, has a somewhat protective effect.
Of course, these online-only crimes are 99%+ copyright, but even copyright has gained in favor among netizens. Then you have “deep fakes”. Bunch of other stuff like holocaust denial. Going after such stuff is quite popular among lemmings, too. And how else are you going to enforce all that?
From the snippets that I read here and there it looks like Denmark has been like this for a long time and it keeps getting worse. They have a very high density of surveillance cameras, loose privacy laws and recently closed their postal services for delivering letters. It only makes sense then to end encryption so you can make no communication whatsoever without the government knowing about every detail.
Breaking encryption would be an unmitigated disaster, Peter Hummelgaard either doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about or is completely insane.
After all, that is a privilege reserved for politicians.
Danes, if you re-elect this man, you are condoning this outrageous position.
You know I’m starting to think the Danes just might suck.
Dane here. I don’t think we suck. But that guy does.
Don’t be racist against all of them just because a few assholes happen to have that citizenship
Not now but it’s a democracy. If they keep supporting him in the next elections their society can be judged.
If it hadn’t already been established long ago, vile creeps like Peter Hummelgaard would lobby against postal privacy, too.
would lobby against postal privacy
No, they wouldn’t because then the stupid masses might wake up and realize how their rights are stripped away. Instead they always pretend that existing constitutional and other laws would not actually protect communication.
I feel like this man has some mighty nasty skeletons in his closet if he was openly advocating for “rules for thee but not for me”
So with all this bullshit coming from some great “democratically elected leaders”, can i just sign up with some random ass party and say i need encryption because i am a politician?:>
‘We must break’ and not ‘We must convince’.
We must break with the totally erroneous perception that governments have the right to trample on peoples privacy.
The real misconception is that breaking encryption in the big services including Signal and Telegram would stop criminals from using encryption. Unfortunately any compromised service can be used for unbreakable encrypted communication, including gmail. So the only thing this is good for is listening in on our crap…