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.
dabeeeenster · 17m 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.
No comments yet
miohtama · 40m ago
Chat Control proposal excludes politicians themselves from Chat Control.
bojan · 36m 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.
Yes, and now he's the NATO Secretary General. As PM, he employed the obvious and straighforward defense against the Dutch version of FOIA of keeping the most important communications in-person behind closed doors[1].
I'd assume many high ranking Western politicians do something similar, while paying lip service to high minded ideals about openness and transparancy.
Eschewing responsibility through these kinds of "tricks", where the person obviously thinks themselves so above everyone else that they can make them idiots to their face, makes my blood boil.
It's always either public "servants" in power, or the rich people, putting themselves outside of the rules. If you are an elected official, and make a stunt like this, it should be grounds for immediate dismissal, IMO. But, alas, nowadays these kinds of things are so minor and irrelevant, in the sea of ridiculously horrible stuff they do.
It's at least refreshing that there are still places, like the Netherlands in this case, where there are some (even when it's surface-level) repercussions of such behavior.
elric · 35m ago
I think the parent commenter was aware of that and was deliberately flipping the tables on these self-serving politicians.
> "in fact all the public servants should have a monitoring device like a black box on them all the time"
Or TwatControl, for short.
hulitu · 31m 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
sebtron · 35m 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.
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.
phkahler · 17m ago
That doesn't say what kind of interference, nor does it say anyone is required to provide assistance to them.
swader999 · 19m ago
They shouldn't have even bothered with the first part.
ionwake · 26m 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. This former issue was in Lyngby, Copenhagen.
arcfour · 15m ago
Maybe Denmark isn't as beautiful as you describe and you are simply biased.
cuntymaccunto · 7m ago
Are you suggesting it's not worth paying 80% effective tax for the privilege of living in an open air prison?
themgt · 6m 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."
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...
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 · 41m 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."
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?
phkamp · 54m ago
I suggest you look into how much of chemistry, physics and biology has already been "outlawed", and how the legislatures went about it ?
kriops · 48m 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.
fdsfdsfdsaasd · 41m ago
That knowledge is not illegal, nor would it necessarily be illegal to write it down.
lostlogin · 34m ago
> nor would it necessarily be illegal to write it down.
Just don’t write it down encrypted.
aleph_minus_one · 3m ago
> That knowledge is not illegal, nor would it necessarily be illegal to write it down.
In Germany, it is often illegal to disseminate such material (e.g. for building bombs) by § 130a StGB:
(1) Anyone who disseminates or makes publicly available content (§ 11 (3)) that is suitable for serving as instruction for an unlawful act referred to in § 126 (1) and is intended to promote or arouse the willingness of others to commit such an act shall be punished with imprisonment of up to three years or a fine.
(2) The same penalty shall apply to anyone who
1. disseminates or makes available to the public content (§ 11 (3)) that is suitable for serving as instructions for an unlawful act referred to in § 126 (1), or
2. gives instructions in public or at a meeting for an unlawful act referred to in Section 126 (1)
in order to encourage or incite others to commit such an act.
"§ 126 Disturbance of public order by threatening to commit criminal offenses
(1) Anyone who, in a manner likely to disturb the public peace,
1. commits one of the cases of breach of the peace specified in § 125a sentence 2 nos. 1 to 4,
2. commits a criminal offense against sexual self-determination in the cases specified in § 177 paragraphs 4 to 8 or § 178,
3. murder (§ 211), manslaughter (§ 212) or genocide (§ 6 of the International Criminal Code) or a crime against humanity (§ 7 of the International Criminal Code) or a war crime (§§ 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 of the International Criminal Code),
5. a criminal offense against personal freedom in the cases of Section 232 (3) sentence 2, Section 232a (3), (4) or (5), Section 232b (3) or (4), Section 233a (3) or (4), in each case insofar as these are crimes, Sections 234 to 234b, § 239a or § 239b,
6. robbery or extortion (§§ 249 to 251 or § 255),
7. a crime dangerous to the public in the cases of Sections 306 to 306c or 307 (1) to (3), Section 308 (1) to (3), Section 309 (1) to (4), Sections 313, 314 or 315 (3), § 315b (3), § 316a (1) or (3), § 316c (1) or (3) or § 318 (3) or (4), or
8. a dangerous offense in the cases of § 309 (6), § 311 (1), § 316b (1), § 317 (1) or § 318 (1)
shall be punished with imprisonment of up to three years or a fine.
(2) Anyone who, in a manner likely to disturb public peace, knowingly falsely claims that one of the unlawful acts referred to in paragraph 1 is about to be committed shall also be punished.
SV_BubbleTime · 41m ago
You are familiar with “intent” right? It’s not right, that doesn’t mean it isn’t so.
fsflover · 41m ago
Tell that to Chinese trying to get through the Great Firewall.
paweladamczuk · 32m ago
Better yet, tell that to the Chinese who can't be bothered to try to get through the Great Firewall.
aredox · 49m 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.
SV_BubbleTime · 38m ago
Interestingly, the laws around high explosives in the US aren’t as restricted as you think.
You can make lots of things legally. The laws are around storage and transport. Where the short version is you 24hours and you mostly can’t transport.
_kb · 16m ago
“The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.”
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.
HWR_14 · 23m 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.
koakuma-chan · 41m ago
They'll just ban encrypted apps?
kriops · 30m ago
Define 'encrypted app' in a way that is not just completely arbitrary and internally inconsistent.
anticorporate · 5m ago
It's almost as if being able to ban things in a completely arbitrary and internally inconsistent way was exactly the point...
koakuma-chan · 21m ago
They'll just ban apps like Signal.
lawn · 1m ago
Which is comical because the Swedish military has standardized signal for all non-classified communication.
mtlmtlmtlmtl · 28m ago
And if they do that, do you think it will affect what criminals do?
koakuma-chan · 13m ago
I don't have enough context, why are they trying to ban encryption in the first place?
shadowgovt · 18m ago
Yes. Because it will decrease the legitimate traffic online that is encrypted, which makes it easier to pick out encrypted channels from the noise. A few listeners at key nodes in the country's communications network to flag encrypted signals for investigation or simple disruption and you're G2G.
It's the "If you ban guns, only criminals will have guns" theory, except the other side of that coin is "It's real easy to see who the criminals are if guns are banned: they're the folks carrying guns."
tclover · 52m 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 ;)
Svip · 51m 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:
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.)
einarfd · 1h 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 · 38m 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."
rsynnott · 19m 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.
NullCascade · 23m 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 · 18m 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 · 13m ago
How would they go about that without violating other laws/rights? The state cannot act on rumors alone.
Yokolos · 12m 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.
(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")
bsenftner · 3m ago
Time to learn Navajo and other obscure languages. Then watch the fear propaganda as these dicks make foreign languages nobody speaks illegal.
b3lvedere · 42m 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-bee · 28m 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.
fxtentacle · 1h 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 · 1h ago
Well according to the Chat Control legislation proposal, politicians are, of course, exempt from monitoring.
mrighele · 1h 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 · 55m ago
Politicians' work emails are exempt, but private ones as citizens aren't
ricardo81 · 41m 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.
arcmutex · 49m ago
When Governments ban encryption, its like banning the citizens from sending unreadable gibberish messages over the network.
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.
tokai · 29m 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.
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?
patchtopic · 56m ago
A false civil liberty they reserved for themselves.
Aldipower · 1h ago
Det er virkelig et skam. Pinlig.
vages · 1h ago
*en skam
sgt · 48m ago
Han skriver dansk
LadyCailin · 28m ago
Kamalåså!
guccihat · 19m 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.
shiandow · 52m 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.
r2xdgw129 · 1h 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 · 55m 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.
Mistletoe · 1h 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 · 1h ago
Those politicians can barely write laws that are not a frontal attack on fundamental rights.
b3lvedere · 49m ago
Not that i do not agree, but how did the humans actually do that a couple of thousands of years 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 · 23m 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.
patchtopic · 55m ago
well said.
christkv · 1h ago
Well then why does he need an exception from the rule.
catigula · 1h 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.
31337Logic · 54m 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.
isaacremuant · 18m 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.
raxxorraxor · 36m 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.
rdm_blackhole · 14m 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.
tokai · 12m ago
He is a minister of a center-right wing government.
mr90210 · 46m ago
The Danish showing their claws. The grass isn’t greener.
Corruption and incompetence, solved.
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.
No comments yet
[0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2429354-wissen-sms-jes-door-rutte-vol...
I'd assume many high ranking Western politicians do something similar, while paying lip service to high minded ideals about openness and transparancy.
[1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutte-doctrine
It's always either public "servants" in power, or the rich people, putting themselves outside of the rules. If you are an elected official, and make a stunt like this, it should be grounds for immediate dismissal, IMO. But, alas, nowadays these kinds of things are so minor and irrelevant, in the sea of ridiculously horrible stuff they do.
It's at least refreshing that there are still places, like the Netherlands in this case, where there are some (even when it's surface-level) repercussions of such behavior.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45127521
Or TwatControl, for short.
no. Regards, Ursula
> 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...
> "Postal and telecommunications secrecy are inviolable."
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Constitution_of_t...
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.
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. This former issue was in Lyngby, Copenhagen.
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...
Diego has been part of putting together this open letter from 500+ cryptography and cybersecurity researchers: https://csa-scientist-open-letter.org/Sep2025
The truth is that this is just another corrupt politician.
"*EU politicians exempt themselves from this surveillance under "professional secrecy" rules."
source: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
In other words, it is not even slightly comparable.
Just don’t write it down encrypted.
In Germany, it is often illegal to disseminate such material (e.g. for building bombs) by § 130a StGB:
> https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__130a.html
DeepL translation:
"§ 130a Instructions for criminal offenses
(1) Anyone who disseminates or makes publicly available content (§ 11 (3)) that is suitable for serving as instruction for an unlawful act referred to in § 126 (1) and is intended to promote or arouse the willingness of others to commit such an act shall be punished with imprisonment of up to three years or a fine.
(2) The same penalty shall apply to anyone who
1. disseminates or makes available to the public content (§ 11 (3)) that is suitable for serving as instructions for an unlawful act referred to in § 126 (1), or
2. gives instructions in public or at a meeting for an unlawful act referred to in Section 126 (1)
in order to encourage or incite others to commit such an act.
(3) Section 86 (4) shall apply mutatis mutandis."
---
For reference: § 126 StGB is:
> https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__126.html
DeepL translation:
"§ 126 Disturbance of public order by threatening to commit criminal offenses
(1) Anyone who, in a manner likely to disturb the public peace,
1. commits one of the cases of breach of the peace specified in § 125a sentence 2 nos. 1 to 4,
2. commits a criminal offense against sexual self-determination in the cases specified in § 177 paragraphs 4 to 8 or § 178,
3. murder (§ 211), manslaughter (§ 212) or genocide (§ 6 of the International Criminal Code) or a crime against humanity (§ 7 of the International Criminal Code) or a war crime (§§ 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 of the International Criminal Code),
4. grievous bodily harm (§ 224) or serious bodily harm (§ 226),
5. a criminal offense against personal freedom in the cases of Section 232 (3) sentence 2, Section 232a (3), (4) or (5), Section 232b (3) or (4), Section 233a (3) or (4), in each case insofar as these are crimes, Sections 234 to 234b, § 239a or § 239b,
6. robbery or extortion (§§ 249 to 251 or § 255),
7. a crime dangerous to the public in the cases of Sections 306 to 306c or 307 (1) to (3), Section 308 (1) to (3), Section 309 (1) to (4), Sections 313, 314 or 315 (3), § 315b (3), § 316a (1) or (3), § 316c (1) or (3) or § 318 (3) or (4), or
8. a dangerous offense in the cases of § 309 (6), § 311 (1), § 316b (1), § 317 (1) or § 318 (1)
shall be punished with imprisonment of up to three years or a fine.
(2) Anyone who, in a manner likely to disturb public peace, knowingly falsely claims that one of the unlawful acts referred to in paragraph 1 is about to be committed shall also be punished.
Including in the US. The "right to bear arms" doens't cover high-energy explosives.
You can make lots of things legally. The laws are around storage and transport. Where the short version is you 24hours and you mostly can’t transport.
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.
It's the "If you ban guns, only criminals will have guns" theory, except the other side of that coin is "It's real easy to see who the criminals are if guns are banned: they're the folks carrying guns."
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.)
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?
"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."
But instead of going directly after this man our tech inept governments are trying to do the mathematically impossible.
You'd think we never had the Third Reich, Nazis or WW2 with how they're behaving.
(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")
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.
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...
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.
This mass surveillance proposal is so dystopian and broken, I’m genuinely ashamed to be an EU citizen.
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.
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.
That being said I don't agree that his is necessary.
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.
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.
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.