- cross-posted to:
- Technology@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- Technology@programming.dev
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.
Does Denmark not have a secret of correspondence/letters kind of constitutional right?
We do and it’s part of our constitution (same situation as Germany about not being updated). Not that any of the recent governments have cared about this minor detail.
We only recently got rid of another law, which required logging of calls and texts by telecommunications.
This only ended because the EU courts ruled it was against the right to privacy, and it still took them 8 years to drag their feet following the ruling to abolish the law.
Various government from both sides of the political spectrum have slowly introduced, or paved the way for, more mass surveillance, but the current government has been extremely vocal about surveillance.
Edit: penal code says “sealed” messages are off limits. Not that they care 🙄
We (Germany) do, but it has never been updated to include electronic communication.
That’s actually wrong. Art. 10 (1) GG protects the secret of the letter, secret of postal service and the secret of telecommunication (Brief-, Post- und Fernmeldegeheimnis).
Doesn’t need to be updated, electronic communication was included in the very first draft in 1948.
Our constitutional rights ensure that the police must have a good reason to investigate our correspondence. I suppose the issue with well-encrypted messaging for the state is that even with a good reason, the police can’t read the correspondence.
Not that I support this nonsense, just saying.