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  • Hacker News
  • Did they apologize for proposing it in the first place?
    by ginko
  • They’re just withdrawing it “for now” and not making it “mandatory.” They will try to find a different route.
    by pajamasam
  • If I was a conspiracy theorist I might think that the ruling class who so desperately want these kinds of powers are intentionally dividing nations and breaking down social cohesion so the populace must turn to the governments for protection. They're hoping to create societies where the people will beg them to scan private messages rather than to demand rights.

    Give it another 10 years the way things are going, and I'm sure it will be back.

    by stinkbeetle
  • I don't think sockpuppet, aspiring actor to politician EU governments will be around in 10 years. People are waking up.
    by willmadden
  • Deus Ex intro scene has a good line on this... "In the end, they'll beg us to save them".
    by HPsquared
  • > must turn to the governments for protection.

    It's so they can sell you out to corporate interests more effectively. It's a modern day fiefdom.

    by themafia
  • In practice it's a combination of:

    a) wanting to soon expand this scheme to catch criminal gang communication (violent narco-related crime is exploding in e.g. some northern EU countries) [center-right goal]

    b) wanting to make people more nervous about what they post online (immigration vs crime etc is a hot topic that many want to cool down). [center-left goal]

    I suppose that there might also be some naive idealists that primarily care about the stated goal.

    by lysace
  • The main purpose is to identify any nascent organization of political opposition to the status quo so it can be destroyed in its infancy with a minimum amount of resources. It will be used to solve some crimes too but solving crimes still involves a lot of manpower (expensive) and if they solved crime people would be less supportive of expanding surveillance powers even further so you don't really want to do a great job at that.
    by jonbiggums22
  • > Give it another 10 years the way things are going, and I'm sure it will be back.

    I'm giving it 10 months or less. The rate at which things are worsening (in most aspects, not just this) seems to be rapidly climbing from my point of view.

    by tavavex
  • Does anyone know if the "Borgerforslag" had an impact?

    https://www.borgerforslag.dk/se-og-stoet-forslag/?Id=FT-2115...

    https://www.ft.dk/da/aktuelt/nyheder/2025/09/borgerforslag-n...

    by martini333
  • Consideration of the proposal was moved to the 25th of November. So no it didn't reach a point where it could have any impact. I don't remember a single borgerforslag managing to have any impact though. Even if they made it to parliament in time.
    by tokai
  • Let's rebrand and try again!
    by laxd
  • relevant south park clip? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGQS1AZus7E
    by verdverm
  • Lennart Betrayer - CEO :-D
    by actionfromafar
  • More generally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RybNI0KB1bg
    by jameslk
  • Protecting children is critically important, but turning every citizen into a potential suspect by default? That's not justice, that’s just lazy policy design. Honestly, this feels like one of those rare moments where political pressure and public backlash actually worked...
    by KurSix
  • “Protecting children” is a red herring anyway. It’s never actually about the children, as they are more protected than ever and statistically it’s the safest ever in human history. I’d actually argue that children need less protection and more freedom.
    by tomasphan
  • Its like a ocean wave, crashing against the cliff, year in, year out, proposal after proposal, waiting for that final atrocity, justifying pushing it through. The white cliffs of Dover, with no plan on how to regain one day that land, once the crisis subsides. And no mechanism to prevent a permanent crisis, because the controls justify the manufacturing of endless crisis.
    by honkostani
  • This is poetic and painfully accurate
    by KurSix
  • Well, we do have the ECJ as a corrective: https://ccdcoe.org/incyder-articles/eu-data-retention-direct...
    by layer8
  • Like labeling "public rejection" as "controversy."

    What controversy? People just said no.

    by themafia
  • I don’t trust Peter Hummelgaard at all. The way he is pushing for this law seems suspicious and I am wondering if there is a third party nudging him to pursue it. Maybe promising some position in the EU parlament.
    by zero0529
  • His own party has a history of totalitarian initiatives. This is the "surveillance is freedom" party. He was surely getting pressured, but from within.
    by Grikbdl
  • From first person experience, once a society creates a surveillance state, to protect whatever, an inevitable avalanche starts.

    A new game will emerge in which the best players are the ones who excel at finding secrets of others and use them as leverage. We had a president on national TV threating a challenging candidate that he will reveal their secrets... Think about that for a moment and you'll find so many wrong things that this implicitly admits to.

    The disease was a blessing compared to the complications of the cure.

    Nations like to hope things won't happen to them.

    by aljgz
  • Care to provide an example? Just trying to be objective.

    Historically, nearly all states have been surveillance states (including early America). all that has changed in the last ~30 years is technology (capability), and public attitude.

    Mail snooping has been around as long as mail has been around. Warrantless wiretaps on telphone lines were around in just about every country that started having telephones, including the US. AT&T's NSA listening room (the company that invented telephones) isn't unique or special. Book ciphers were invented because snooping courier's messages was so common.

    The NSA didn't build a Yottabyte-scale datacenter for no reason either.

    I'm not disagreeing with your view, I'm just saying that the anti-surveillance sentiment is particularly unique to the cultural "West", and to the post-WW2 generations.

    by notepad0x90
  • I don't think a surveillance state is the root cause of authoritarianism, in that sense I believe it is a slippery slope fallacy. I am still very much against this kind of mass surveillance, simply I think this rhetoric is doing everyone a disservice.

    We don't get authoritarianism without an actual will from a group of people with enough power and support to achieve it. Mass surveillance is simply a milestone on their path to oppression.

    by thrance
  • It's interesting that Peter Hummelgaard's former party comrade Henrik Sass Larsen recently got 4 months of prison for possession of child porn; 6200 pictures and 2200 videos.

    So we are to believe Hummelgaard wants to protect children by enabling vast surveillance, so all the bad offenders out there can get ... 4 months in prison.

    Its not really adding up. And he still hasn't presented any argument for the thing except that you are pro child abuse if you don't agree with him. I'm at the point where I hope he's corrupt and its not just all about power for him.

    by tokai
  • Chat control is surveillance for plebs but not politicians. They want to hide their cp and shift attention to the lower class.
    by hoppp
  • Is that out of line with similar offenses in Denmark?
    by zigzagger11
  • Yeah, it's bad. Like convicted rapists not serving their sentences and going on to take political office.
    by rokkamokka