Bent Winther: If he wants to be prime minister, his qualifications should be significantly adjusted

Thursday, Peter Hummelgaard (S) was forced to postpone the handling of an controversial extension of PET's powers in the Danish Parliament.

For the justice minister, it is a humiliating defeat, but it is also a revelation of his lack of understanding for the balances that are important in Danish society. His political stunt has failed in a serious manner.

Peter Hummelgaard, often mentioned as Mette Frederiksen's successor, faced a storm of colossal proportions when 25 organizations joined together in a joint appeal to remove the controversial proposals from the agenda, while a united opposition, both to the right and the left, has expressed deep skepticism over his plans.

Even The Conservatives, who historically have supported new powers for intelligence services and police, eventually stood against. The conservative leader Mona Juul "will not be part of giving PET almost unlimited powers to monitor Danish citizens," she wrote on Wednesday in X.

Now Hummelgaard's legislative proposal must first be considered and reintroduced on the other side of the summer break. In the meantime, much can happen, even though the justice minister has not yet prepared for any softening of his proposal.

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Gambling with digital society

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When the proposal is controversial, it is not least due to the fact that Denmark is one of the most digitalized societies in the world.

The government often highlights this as something positive. Danes willingly register electronically at the hospital, with the doctor, with the police, in the municipality, at the job center, at the library, at the bank, at the airport, with the tax authorities.

All that was previously on paper is now digital. A development that has occurred over a short period of time in the belief that everything will go well and that the government's confidential handling of our sensitive information is protected by very strict rules.

The successful digitalization is based on a high degree of trust that our information is not shared and only in extreme cases and with proper legal protection can be combined with other registers, if there are suspicions of serious crimes.

Peter Hummelgaard sees digitalization as an opportunity. With the new PET law, one should be able to find criminals as "nails in the haystack," he says.

"In a society where more and more of our activities take place on the internet, PET will have the opportunity to pull the information behind closed doors and combine it with other data," he says (https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/politik/alle-borgere-vil-systematisk-blive-overvaaget-overalt-og-hele-tiden-alligevel ).

With Peter Hummelgaard's proposal for a new PET law, the systematic collection of Danish citizens' personal data can take place continuously and will affect everyone and everything. Critics have called it a surveillance of the entire population.

The artificial intelligence will continue to be fed with millions of sensitive data and, after a review, will spit out the names of individuals who, for various reasons, can be perceived as suspicious.

Their behavior and digital registrations can then be used in a concrete investigation. However, it will still require a court order if the public registers are to be used and combined.

When concerned politicians and experts warned against abuse in the past and said that digitalization is the direct path to George Orwell's Big Brother society, the response has been that it cannot happen in Denmark, because we are protected by very strict rules for registers.

Perhaps the intelligence service will find some criminals "in the haystack" of Danish citizens' sensitive personal data, but the trust in the digitized society risks suffering a serious blow. Who can one trust? What can one tell the case handler, the doctor, the psychiatrist? What books can one borrow from the library?

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Listening to "apparatus"

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In North Korea, no one fears terrorism, because the surveillance is monumental and the punishments are cruel. Therefore, it is about balances. How far should one go to catch the last criminal? And how great a risk is one forced to run in the name of freedom?

Peter Hummelgaard has, with his controversial PET law, revealed a lack of understanding for these important balances, and he has revealed that he listens too much to what his large apparatus might think of possibilities for increased surveillance.

None of the parts increase the voter's assessment of his qualifications as a future prime minister immediately.

Entirely parallel, Peter Hummelgaard had to withdraw his first proposal for a ban on the burning of the Koran in 2023, because it was too far-reaching and criminalized many more and many more than the burning of the Koran.

Over the past few decades, Danish intelligence services have been given more and more resources and more personnel. This has, in the light of terror threats, been a good reason, but it binds extremely if the services are not to be perceived as a state within a state, which lives its own life with secret, incomprehensible and very far-reaching powers.

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