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Comment by nickslaughter02 | Hacker News Reader

Peter Hummelgaard, Danish Minister of Justice: "We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone's civil liberty to communicate on encrypted messaging services."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/danish-justice-min...

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I'd love to see this argument transfered to physical mail. Should it be illegal to send physical letters that are encrypted without also somehow providing the government with an unencrypted copy?

If that somehow seams reasonable on its face to someone, then I don't know where to begin a reasonable discussion.

The cops can intercept physical mail

Yes, but that parallel example is not relevant here because modern online messaging is profoundly different in crucial ways. Governments can (and do) intercept and store nearly all electronic messages which permits instant searching and deep cross-referencing of all content and sender/receiver metadata for every message ever sent by anyone, anywhere, at any time. None of which is true for physical mail. If you don't find that terrifying, you don't fully understand what it means.

When they do intercept physical mail messages, if the sender has encoded the message, in most democracies, the government is not permitted to compel the sender to decode the message. And even if you come under suspicion today and they start intercepting your physical mail, they can't have an LLM read ALL the physical letters you've ever sent at the press of a key. With electronic communications they don't even need suspicion first. The LLMs are already actively searching everything hunting for anything the government labels sufficiently "suspicious." The "Five Eyes" intelligence agencies have been capturing all email, instant messages and phone call metadata for more than 15 years already.

Yes but it too can be encrypted

>> Should it be illegal to send physical letters that are encrypted without also somehow providing the government with an unencrypted copy?

> The cops can intercept physical mail

You didn't answer the question...

The post you replied to mentioned encrypted messages

Perhaps the EU should consider adding access to secure encrypted communication to the human intrinsic rights to prevent such things in the future. He seems to be motivated by increases in gang crime that he will get blamed for.

> He seems to be motivated by increases in gang crime that he will get blamed for

...which is the government's fault and they should be blamed.

I'd love to have access to his private email then. Please lead by example, Peter!

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