Translated copy:

Minister will shut down encrypted messages. Professor calls it "extremely far-reaching"

Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard wants encrypted messaging services such as Whatsapp and Telegram to go where the pepper grows and mentions geoblocking as an option to close them down. A professor of cyber security is outraged by the proposal, which also causes concern at the Danish Association of Journalists.

It doesn't happen very often that cyber security professor Jens Myrup Pedersen himself contacts journalists to get his point of view across.

But after reading the media coverage that the Minister of Justice wants encrypted services such as WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram shut down, he needs to get something "dirty out".

"Those you want to monitor will probably have to find other places to go. The bottom line is that it will be completely trivial to circumvent this, so the minister's position is far-fetched,' says Jens Myrup Pedersen, who is one of Denmark's most cited experts in IT security and national coach for the cyber national team.

At a press conference on Tuesday, side by side with the Swedish Minister of Justice, Gunnar Strömmar, Peter Hummelgaard said that we had to deal with "that it is every man's right to freedom to communicate on encrypted services".

National Police Chief Thorkild Fogde followed up and said that the citizens' legal guarantee is ensured by the fact that the police must first have a court order from a judge before they can gain access.

Doesn't it make sense that the police can access the communications of the worst thugs with a warrant?

"If you first give the possibility to break into encrypted messages, it will also be misused. It could be a Russian spy in the police who can then read the Minister of Justice's messages,' says Jens Myrup Pedersen.

The question is ultimately who we want to be, believes Jens Myrup Pedersen, who calls the whole discussion "very principled".

"If we start breaking the encryption, it will lead to mass surveillance of ordinary people, and then we cannot tell the other countries to stop monitoring their human rights activists, political opponents and journalists. Because then we also do it ourselves,' he points out.

This is how the police get access to your communications
Danish telecommunications providers are obliged to log traffic data about our telecommunications in accordance with the rules in the Administration of Justice Act and to hand over telecommunications data to the police or assist in the interception of telephone conversations after a court order.

New digital services such as Whatsapp and Signal offer users an encrypted communication without storing data, so that there will be no data to hand over if the police with a court order in hand should request it.

Source: Lecturer, Ph.D. Lene Wacher Lentz, Department of Law, Aalborg University

Journalist chairman: Harms our work
At the Danish Association of Journalists, chairman Tine Johansen is also very concerned about the idea of a showdown with the encrypted messaging services. Journalists use them extensively to communicate with sources whose identity it is important to protect.

"It is an important principle that journalists can guarantee source protection for the people who put a lot at stake to talk to representatives of the press. If we can no longer provide them with that protection, it is deeply problematic,' she says.

Tine Johansen, chairman of the Danish Association of Journalists
It is an important principle that journalists can guarantee source protection, says Tine Johansen, chairman of the Danish Journalists' Association.
Illustration: Benita Marcussen.
In large parts of the world, press freedom is under pressure, also in countries close to us such as Poland and Hungary. Therefore, there is a need for protection so that whistleblowers can hand over information in a safe way, she believes.

"You cannot guarantee people that they can hand over information safely if that protection is breached. Then it will be a violation of our agreement,' she says and also refers to the EU's new regulation on freedom of the press (European Media Freedom Act).

Here it appears that you must not monitor journalists. But in connection with the adoption of the proposal, there were several forces from various EU countries who wanted that part out of the regulation with arguments that the state's security could be at stake.

Tine Johansen understands well the desire for security and the fight against crime. But she believes that it is a dangerous path to go down, and gives as an example the EU Commission's proposal for so-called chat control, which should allow all encrypted communication to be scanned for harmful content about children.

"I'm just saying that any intervention in communication could damage our ability to provide source protection," she says.

Geoblocking makes no sense
The Minister of Justice also explained at the press conference that he could not understand that so many politicians in Christiansborg were against the EU proposal on chat control.

According to the minister, many of the encrypted messaging services are used to a large extent to facilitate various forms of crime, and he calls it a " big legal headache " to get the shovel under them.

But if the EU proposal becomes a reality, it could lead to a slippery slope, believes Professor Jens Myrup Pedersen.

"If you make that proposal a reality, there will soon be a Danish Minister of Justice who will think that you should open up to scanning content that looks like something criminal. Once you open up to it, you're on a slippery slope that you can't stop,' he says.

One of the minister's proposals is that these services could be geoblocked. What do you think about that solution?

"I don't understand that, it makes no sense. Unless you want to ban VPN connections or monitor all communications in and out of the country. This is an extremely far-reaching proposal. But just the fact that you think it should be that way is an extreme point of view. To be a bit nice, I hope he has been misunderstood,' says Jens Myrup Pedersen.

Here is the full quote from the Minister of Justice
"I would like to add that one of the things they (the Swedes, ed) have done skillfully is their ability to actually decrypt these communication services, and it was one of the focal points that they wanted to strengthen the police's capabilities to decrypt communications and we have said that in light of this situation we will add even more resources to it. Then there is another thing too, it is a political conflict, to take a stand that it is every man's freedom right to communicate on encrypted services. We have had a discussion about a regulation in the EU to protect against child pornography, where everyone has been against a regulation where you can screen for child pornography, but many of these services are used to a large extent to facilitate various types of crime, and for me it's a huge legal headache to get the shovel under them. My political intention is, if I could stand on it alone, it would be to say that there are some of these services that must be geoblocked or shut down for them. It is not legally possible today, but we are constantly trying to see if they can be developed and invented."