Danish ass-clown, and Minister of Justice, Peter Hummelgarrd is quoted as saying:

“We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone’s civil liberty to communicate on encrypted messaging services.”

Which, is of course, comically absurd. If the constitutions and other laws and mechanisms around the world didn’t already explicitly guard personal privacy, and therefore the ability to use services that safeguard that privacy using encryption, you also run in to the problem of Math.

Math being the thing that makes encryption work the way it does. Math that is really just a series of formulas to take a stream of bytes, scramble it in some way that makes it difficult to unscramble unless you’re using a special input that only you know to unscramble it. Math is hard to govern, as it’s just an idea. A way in which to demonstrate how to solve a problem. Making encryption (services, et al) is just to make certain branches of mathematics illegal, and therefore certain kinds of thought illegal.

Not to mention, how is making encryption, or services that provide encrypted messaging going to do anything to stop crime? Do criminals also follow the law around firearm sales and ownership? Do criminals follow any laws that you implement? No? So what would stop them from continuing to do so?

Lets say you don’t ban encrypted messaging services, but instead force companies to implement a tap, where the government gets to peek at messages as they transverse a system. Lets also say that the only people who are able to peek at these messages are the so-called “Good Guys” &tm;, does this also apply to the public servants? People who we entrust to do the right thing on behalf of the populace? No? Of course not. Rules for Thee; None for Me.

Again, implementing a tap doesn’t stop anyone anywhere from doing any encrypted messaging. It just moves the problem somewhere else. Criminals aren’t using WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, at least real criminals that you, ostensibly, want to capture don’t. Your populace does. So, lets drop the charade and call a spade a spade: You want to listen in on communications of your population so that you can either control, kill or otherwise silence “problematic” speech. You can coat it in whatever linguistic sugar you’d like, but that’s what you want. Power over what people say and do. Power to squash those who would oppose you or your ideals. Power.

Anyone with half-a-brain should say “No.” Yet, here we are, even having this debate because the whole world is leaning authoritarian lately, and plenty of people are just willing to go along for the ride. Either due to apathy (me) or learned hopelessness, or just straight up being silenced. The writing, however, has been on the proverbial wall for some time now. If you’re part of any “right-winged” movement, you’re buying into this police state. Either for supposed safety, ideology or just lack of empathy for those who are different than you.

I say: Fuck you. You don’t scare me.