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Danish justice minister: we must break perception of right to private messaging [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2025-09-15

Faced with stiff opposition, European countries are backing off plans to abolish encrypted messaging services, which allow people to keep communications private from hackers, criminals and governments alike. Denmark, though, is reportedly planning to forge ahead; its Minister of Justice, Peter Hummelgaard, was the key architect of the so-called "Chat Control" plans.

"We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone's civil liberty to communicate on encrypted messaging services," he writes, as translated by one source.

According to Google Translate: "we need to break with the completely erroneous perception that it is every man's right to freedom to communicate on encrypted messaging services."

The public rationale for Chat Control-style laws is always "think of the childen," driven by legimitate concerns over abusive and harmful material. Hummelgaard's unguarded remarks are a reminder of the broader purpose of these laws: to provide law enforcement and intelligence agencies with pervasive surveillance of private communications without any real accountability or oversight.

The European Commission is preparing a new law designed to protect children against abuse. The law seeks to prevent the spread of child abuse material by scanning all citizens' messages. Protecting children is essential, but the proposed law would allow governments to scan all our communications, seriously infringing on citizens' rights, and would not actually help address child abuse.

It is technically unfeasible to prevent private encrypted communication between child sex abusers, terrorists and other criminals; Chat Control-style laws will never collar any but the dumbest. The reality is you have to outsmart them.

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