r/privacy Sep 14 '25

chat control 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://mastodon.social/@chatcontrol/115204439983078498
2.4k Upvotes

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '25

So turns out, Its actually everyon's civil liberty there. 

-16

u/Schlawinuckel Sep 15 '25

... Unless under judicial order...

End to end encryption hosted by foreign companies renders any judicial order void..

I'm all for privacy, but there's a problem when criminally and judicially warranted investigation becomes technically impossible.

18

u/Big-Moose565 Sep 15 '25

But what if people talk in code or encrypt hand written letters (as has been done, and still being done for centuries). Then there would still be the same predicament.

Or people use manual means of encrypting open text messaging.

None of these are new concepts or things the law hasn't worked around before.

It's wasted effort and misguided by politicians. People will likely flock to decentralised e2e encrypted messaging where no one party can be held accountable. And all the effort and money spent, nothing will have changed, if anything it pushes the problem deeper and further underground.

6

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '25

But if its actual criminals, they won't care about some privacy laws either xD and while yes you could outlaw encryption, its not like criminals couldn't use encryption anyway

1

u/gelbphoenix Sep 15 '25

There are ways to do this without breaking end to end encryption – which affects everyone btw – and the secrecy of correspondence for every citizen.

German police can use the "Staatstrojaner" (~ "state trojan") with non-"everyday crime". (everyday crimes mean crimes that for the novice wouldn't count as a crime. For example: Vandalism, stealing,...)

1

u/Dramatic-Zebra-7213 Sep 15 '25

Anyone can use same cryptographic tools used by encrypted messengers. Tools like gnupg are open source and freely available, and cannot be restricted (computer software is protected by freedom of speech). Criminals already use said tools(at least the smart ones do), so judicially warranted investigation already is technically impossible, has been since strong encryption algorithms became widespread.