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Comment by dataflow | Hacker News Reader

I'm confused reading this. How in the world is GPS-tracking someone's car supposed to show hypocrisy with respect to encryption?

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Because this someone wants to know location of everyone in the country while his own location should be of course private and protected.

Hmmm, in context he was(?) tracking a public ministers car.

I'm Australian and I'm all for peeling back and making transparent all the comings and goings of public officials (within reason) - they deserve a good return, a hefty return even, for dedicated public service .. and they deserve to know that there's a hammer waiting for any betrayal of public trust, shady financial dealings (while in office), etc.

As a "known in advance covenant" that's not altogether unreasonable, raises the bar for would be Trumpesque grifters, and allows for privacy for those not seeking access to public offices, trust, and cookie jars.

I still don't understand what that has to do with encryption. Are these two separate policy proposals, one for GPS tracking and one for encryption, that this person is supporting?

Think about why do governments want to ban encryption? Because they want to know everything about you all the time. Collecting information on someone such as their location is of the same order.

It may be of the same order, but it is a different thing. No one, not even techies like here on HN, are going to see his actions as valid.

He has to use a different method because obviously he does not have a backdoor into the prime minister's phone. The fact that "obviously wrong" invasive methods have to be used (now) to imitate something that the prime minister want to apply to every citizen (except himself and his buddies) in the future can be seen as part of the point.

Yes, but that also means he both goes too far (for people like me who might sympathize with him) and loses the connection with the original issue, creating his own communication problem. Yes, it is good and necessary to show politicians what they are doing to the citizens they are supposed to represent, but that does not justify all means.

It’s not fundamentally different than indiscriminately scanning everyone’s private communication (what the Danish government is trying to accomplish on the EU level)

I think we'll keep disagreeing on what "fundamentally different" means. Agreed that the Danish gov't proposals are reprehensible and deserve counteraction.

> Think about why do governments want to ban encryption? Because they want to know everything about you all the time.

Or, say, because they want a judicial warrant to be sufficient for obtaining someone's information without their consent?

> Collecting information on someone such as their location is of the same order.

Huh? This sounds crazy.

It's not that complicated. Minister wants to remove citizens privacy. Protester invades privacy of minister in response. On the one hand I agree that gps-tracking is not exactly the same as analyzing people's messages, on the other hand one can often infer whereabouts through messaging services indirectly or even directly such as when people share their gps location with one another (a feature that e.g. whatsapp has).

Anyway, apparently this Peter Hummelgaard has said:

"I indisputably believe that surveillance creates an increased sense of security ... and given that the prerequisite for freedom is security, yes, I believe that more surveillance equates to more freedom"

so I think you will find it easier to understand these kinds of protest actions if you consider them in the context of privacy vs. surveillance more broadly conceived.

(source for quote https://mastodon.social/@chatcontrol/115314954743042414 -> https://www.dr.dk/lyd/special-radio/prompt/prompt-2025/egois...)

> It's not that complicated. Minister wants to remove citizens privacy. Protester invades privacy of minister in response.

"It's not that complicated"... indeed?

Privacy was a thing long before encryption even existed. So were stalking, wiretapping, etc. That whole time, judicial warrants had always been legally and practically adequate for obtaining and reviewing evidence that was physically accessible. (And for arresting stalkers and wiretappers.)

Encryption changed all that. It effectively undermined the ability of warrants to do their job.

Regardless of how you feel about the above, surely you agree that none of that is factually incorrect, right? Plaintext + privacy were simultaneously a thing for a long time, right?

So, whatever you feel, doesn't it feel a little disingenuous to suggest that the two are necessarily tied together? And to smear someone as hypocritical because they believe in both? Did the guy ever advocate for exposing everyone's real-time location?

Look, I don't even know the guy. And I'm not even trying to defend anything here on its merits. I'm just trying to set the record straight as to what the facts and the logical implications are(n't). Do you(/him/etc.) want an honest debate? Where you can actually win with people coming to support your ideas on their merits? Or do you want to take the craziest logical leaps and lose all your potential supporters in the process?

>That whole time, judicial warrants had always been legally and practically adequate for obtaining and reviewing evidence that was physically accessible.

Certainly not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence

You're telling me that in Denmark they can't open your letters even with a judicial order?

The Danish constitution also mentions privacy, in the form of paragraph 72 that stipulates that the confiscation and examination of letters and other papers; as well the interception of postal-, telegraph- and telephone communication cannot be done without a judicial order.

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

> So were stalking, wiretapping, etc. That whole time, judicial warrants had

Those things were costly and didn’t scale very well. Which is why it was more tolerable.

Without encryption and with legally required backdoors the authorities can just “wiretap” everyone just in case they might commit a crime. That is what the Danish government wants to do by pushing ChatControl in the EU. There is absolutely nothing crazy about that and they are perfectly transparent about what they are doing. Most sensible people believe that that’s a too high cost.

Encryption is used to remain private in ones comings and goings and communication.

It’s not the same as gps, but it’s similar. If you can decrypt someone’s communications, you can more easily determine their location.

Lol that's bullshit. There is a difference between "accessible to law enforcement in a official criminal investigation overseen by a judge" and "public to everyone".

What these weirdo hacktivists don't understand is that the voting public wants to live in a society.

"You take my privacy, I take yours" would be the thought process here. Not complicated.

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