Peter Hummelgaard, Danish Minister of Justice: "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"
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."
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.
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.
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 has no good explanations or arguments. He was beaten as a child by his father and now he is reproducing the abuse of power he experienced on all of us. I'm not even trying to be snarky, it's the only framing that can explain his behavior.
It's not even the fact that that belief is unfounded, but that he's actually equating a sense of security with security itself that makes that statement a bold yet easily overlooked lie. That he calls himself a social-democrat!
I was thinking about cognitive therapy to decrease the likelihood they would harm people as a result of the proclivities they cannot change. Some people have a natural urge to murder people all the time, if they learn to control it there is no reason they cannot contribute to society.
There's a program in Germany related to this, called Kein Täter Werden (to not become an abuser / don't become an absuer). I think it's controversial because the therapy is confidential, even if the participants have committed abuse.
Do we have any evidence that sexual preference is genetic? My understanding was that it was primarily based on hormone levels during pregnancy, kind of like handedness. Some amount pf experience also certainly plays a factor when it comes to abusive behavior, people can turn people into abusers via abuse.
> Peter Hummelgaard, Danish Minister of Justice: "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"
I mean, he's kinda right. It just depends on if you feel you're a target or not. If you're not the target, you feel an increased sense of security from any threat caused by the people who are the target.
A really obvious example is a dictator like Kim Jong Un: there's a huge amount of surveillance in North Korea, but all of it serves him and none of it threatens him.
So, especially someone kind of unthoughtful and ignorant of the complexities might feel "an increased sense of security" from this surveillance, because they know they're not a pedophile so assume surveillance purportedly targeted at pedophiles will do them no harm. You might even feel "more freedom" to the degree you feel pedophiles are a threat to you or your family.
It's not freedom if it's only afforded to a privileged few at the expense of everyone else. And no oppression is ever truly limited to the intended targets only. It'll always be abused and applied beyond the original or stated intent.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45473136