Freedom is one of the most important questions of the AI era. It is whether your data, your communications and your ordinary life remain yours when most of the infrastructure around them is owned by someone else. Privacy is the basic case — but the broader question is whether civil liberties survive technology that makes mass surveillance almost free.
I have spent my career building software in environments where the rules around data were taken seriously — regulated fields like finance — as well as environments where data is the business itself. That experience makes one thing obvious: privacy and civil liberties don't protect themselves. They are protected by laws, by regulations, and by individuals who care about it passionately.
Securing freedom in the AI era requires carefully weighed trade-offs and strict limits. Mass surveillance, expanding the use of biometric identifiers, or automatic scanning of messages are not tools to be adopted lightly, if at all. Every step that erodes privacy needs airtight justification and clear evidence of benefit — without that, it has no case.
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Chat control: parliament was right
The European Parliament rejected the extension of the chat control law. The police statistics are real, but parliament was still right — here is why.
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The use of biometric identifiers in passports must not be expanded
When fingerprints were added to passports, Finland created a national biometric register. Now the government wants to open it to police use.
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Fundamental rights must not be dismantled without justification
The government plans to extend intelligence methods to fight crime without individual suspicion — a serious threat to fundamental rights.
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Frequently asked questions
How does AI threaten fundamental rights?
AI makes mass surveillance technically easier, so legislation has to hold the line on fundamental rights. The same principle that made rejecting the EU’s chat control proposal the right call applies to any automatic scanning of private messages. Without strong privacy protection, democracy cannot function, and AI must never be used to weaken it. Fundamental rights have to be the starting point for all legislation.
Why should surveillance not be extended without individual suspicion?
Because a concrete suspicion before surveillance is the rule-of-law minimum, not special treatment for privacy. Police cannot obtain a search warrant without reasonable grounds, and wiretapping requires a court order. The same principles belong in the digital environment. Untargeted surveillance is also ineffective: organised crime has already moved to the dark web and encrypted apps that scanning does not reach, so the surveillance would fall on ordinary users.
Why should the use of biometric data not be expanded?
A fingerprint or a face now works like a password, but it cannot be changed. Finland is one of the few EU countries that stores biometric passport data in a permanent national register, and citizens were in practice forced to hand it over. Opening it to the police erodes trust, and once a use is opened, it is likely to be widened year after year. The better model is Germany’s, where fingerprint data is destroyed once the passport has been created.