*36c3 preroll music*
Herald: ...but now we start what we're here for and I'm really happy to be
allowed to introduce Anna Mazgal. She will talk about something which a great title.
I love it. "Confessions of a Future Terrorist". Terror, terrorism is the one
thing you can always shout out and you get everything through. And she will give us a
rough guide to overregulate free speech with anti-terrorist measures. Anna works
for Wikimedia where she's a lobbyist of human rights into the digital environment
and works in Brussels. And she gives a lot of talk. And I think it's the first time
at a congress for her, is that right? Anna: Second time.
Herald: Second time? I haven't really researched right, because I searched for
it. So I have to do this again. It's her 2nd time for congress and I'm really
happy to have her here. Please welcome her with a big round of applause.
Anna, the stage is yours. Anna: Thank you. Yes. So as you have
already heard, I don't do any of the cool things that we comedians and Wikipedians
do. I am based in Brussels and the L-word, I do the lobbying on behalf of our
community. And today I am here because I wanted to talk to you about one of the
proposals of 4 laws that we are now observing the development of. And I wanted
to share my concerns also like active, as an activist, because I'm really worried
how, if that law passes in its worst possible vision or one of the of the bad
versions, how it will affect my work. I'm also concerned how it would it will affect
your work. And basically all of ours expression online. And I also want to
share with you that this law makes me really angry. So, so I think these are a
few good reasons to be here and to talk to you. And I hope after this presentation we
can have a conversation about this. And I'm looking forward also to your
perspective on it and, and also the things you may not agree with maybe. So, so what
is this law? So, in September 2018, the European Commission came out with a
proposal of regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content
online. So there are a few things to unpack here of for what it is about. First
of all, when we see a law that is about Internet and that is about the content and
what is about the online environment and it says it will prevent something, this
always brings a very difficult and complicated perspective for us, the
digital rights activists in Brussels. Because prevention online never means
anything good. So, so this is one thing. The other thing is that this very troubled
concept of terrorist content, I will be talking about this more, we will talk, I
will show you how the European Commission understands it and what are the problems
with that understanding and whether this is something that can actually be really
defined in the law. So, so these are the, the already the red flags that I have seen
and we have seen when we were, when we first got them, the proposal, into our
hands. I would like to tell you a little bit about the framework of it. This is
probably the, the most dry part of that, but I think it's important to correctly
place it. First of all, this is the European Union legislation. So we're
talking about the legislation that will influence 27 member states. Maybe 28, but
we know about Brexit, so, so that is a debatable what's going to happen there.
And it's important to note that whenever we have European legislation in the EU,
this is the, these are the laws that actually are shaping the laws of all those
countries. And they come before the national laws. So, so should this, should
this be implemented in any of the form, when it's implemented in any of the form,
this is what is going to happen. The next important part of information that I want
to give you is that this particular regulation is a part of the framework that
is called Digital Single Market. So the European Union, one of, one of the
objectives when a European Commission created the law and when other
bodies of the European Union work on it, is that there is, that, that the laws in
the member states of the European Union are actually similar. And
the Digital Single Market means that what we want, we want to achieve something on
the Internet that in a way is already achieved within the European Union
geographically, meaning that we don't want the borders on the Internet between people
communicating and also delivering goods and services in the European Union.
And you may ask how that connects with the terrorist content and how
that connects with what today's topics. To be honest, I am also puzzled because I
think, that legislation that talks about how people communicate online and what is
considered the speech that we wanted there and we don't want this should not be a
part of a framework that is about market. So this is also something that
brings a concern. Also, as you've seen at the first slide, this piece of
legislation, this proposal is called the regulation. And not to go too much into
details about what are the forms of legislation in the EU, the important thing
to know here is that the regulation is a law that once it is adopted by the EU,
once the parliament votes on it, it starts, it is binding directly in
all the member states of the European Union, which means that there is no
further discussion on how this should be actually used. Of course, in each country
there are different decisions being made by different bodies. But it means for us,
the people that work on this and that want to influence the legislative process, that
once this law is out of Brussels, there is nothing much to be done
about how it's going to be implemented. And this is
important because for now, the discussion about this, because for us, the discussion
about this, is the one that happens in Brussels. There are a few versions of the
law. And very quickly, European Commission proposes the law. European Parliament
looks at it, debates it, and then produces its own version of it. So amends it or
makes it worse. And then the Council of the EU, which is the gathering of all the
member states and the representatives of the government of the
member states, also creates their own version. And then, of course, when you
have 3 versions, you also need to have a lot of conversations and a lot of
negotiation, how to put this together into one. And all of those bodies have their
own ideas. Every one of those bodies have their own ideas on how any law should
look like. So this process is not only complicated, but also this negotiation
that is called the trilogs. It's actually very non-transparent. And there is no or
almost none, no official information about how those negotiations go, what are the
versions of the document and so on. This is the part that we are now in. And I will
talk more about this later on. Today I want to talk to you about the potential
consequences of diversion. That is the original one, which is the European
Commission's version. And it's because it will be very complicated and
confusing I guess, if we look at all of the proposals that are on the table. But
also, it's important because European Commission has a lot of influence also
informally, both on member states and also on - to an extent - on the whole trial
process. So whatever gains we have in other versions or whatever better
solutions we have there, they are not secure yet. And I promise I'm almost
done with this part. There is other relevant legislation that we'll
consider. One is the E-Commerce Directive. And in this, the part that is
very relevant is for this particular conversation, is that the platforms,
according to this law or Internet services or hosting providers are not by default
responsible for the content that users play, place online. So it's a very
important premise that also protects us, protects our rights, protects our privacy,
that the they are not, they cannot go after us or they cannot look for, for
the content that could be potentially illegal, which would mean that they would
have to look into everything. But of course, they have to react when somebody
notifies them and they have to see whether the information that is placed by the
users should stay up or not. There is also a directive on combating terrorism. And
this is the piece of legislation that is quite recent to my best
knowledge. Not all countries in the European Union, not all member states have
implemented it yet. So for us, it was also very puzzling that we actually have a new
law, a new proposal that is talking about the communication part of, of what already
has been mentioned in this directive. When we still don't know how it works, we still
don't know because this law is physically not being used at all. So this was for
us also difficult to understand why the commission does not want to wait and see
how like what comes out from the directive on combating terrorism. So
why would the European Commission and why the European legislators would
actually want such a law that, again, is about the content that people post
through different services and why this is an important issue. If this is, why this
issue is actually conflated with the market questions and the
harmonization in the digital market. So there are some serious numbers here. 94 %
and 99 %. And I'm wondering if you have any idea what those numbers are about.
Audience: Persons. Anna: I'm sorry?
Audience: Persons. Anna: Yes. It's about people. But the
numbers are actually presenting, so there was a survey done by Eurostat and those
numbers present the percentage of people first number 94 % presents the
percentage of people that say that they have not come across terrorist content
online. Right. So, inversely, only 6 % of people actually say that they had
access to terrorist content, it's important to underline that they say it
because there's no way to check what that content actually was and of course we can,
you know, here is the analogy of what a certain American judge said about
pornography. I know it when I see it. It's not a very good definition of anything,
really. So I would argue that actually 6 % of people being affected by something
is not really a big percentage and that the European Union actually has bigger
problems to deal with and where they can spend money and energy on. E.g., we are
all affected by, I don't know, air pollution and that's much more people.
89% are the people in the age range between 15 and 24. But again, were not
affected by something what they would consider terrorist content. Of course,
would somebody think of the children? There you go.
The children and young people do not also experience
it in an overwhelming, overwhelmingly. So, but this rationale
is being used, 6 % and 11 % as one of the reasons why this regulation is
important, why this law is important. The other is the exposure to, the other reason
is the exposure to imagery of violent crimes via social media. So, of course, we
know that, that platforms such as Facebook and YouTube contain all sorts of things
that people look. We also know that because of their business models, they
sometimes push controversial content or violent content into, into peoples
proposal, that the proposals that they give to people to, to watch or to
read. So this is, actually the 2nd part is not addressed by this, by this
proposal at all. But nevertheless, whenever we talk to the representatives of
the commission why this law is there, they start waving, that was my experience that
the one of the meetings, the person started waving his phone at me and saying,
"Well, you know, there are beheading videos online and I can show you how
horrible it is", which I consider to be an emotional
blackmail at best, but not really a good regulatory impulse.
So I guess maybe the commission people are somehow
mysteriously affected by that content more than anything else. I don't mean to joke
about those, those videos because of course, it is not something that I would
want to watch and, and it is very violent. But I would also argue that the problem is
not that the video is there, but that somebody has been beheaded. And this is
where we should actually direct our attention and look for the sources of that
sort of behavior and not only to try and clean the Internet. The other reason why,
why this law should be enacted is a radicalisation. Of course, this is a,
this is a problem for certain vulnerable populations and people. And we
can read about it a lot. And there are organizations that are dealing with
strategies to counteract radicalisation. Again, when we look at the evidence, what
is the, what is the relationship between content that is available online and the
fact that people get radicalized in different level, in different ways, that
we didn't see any research and the commission also did not present any
research that would actually point to at least the correlation between the two. So
again, asked about, so "How did you come up with this idea since without really
actually showing the, the support for your claim that radicalisation is connected to
that?" This is a quote from a meeting that happened public and journalists were
there. Again, the person from the commission said, "We had to make a guess,
so we made the guess that way." There is the guess being, yes, there is some sort
of connection between the content and the radicalisation. And then finally, when we
read the impact assessment and when we look at the different articles, that or
different explanations that the European Commission posts about the
rationale for this law, of course, they bring the terrorists attack that have
been happening and they make, they swiftly go from naming the different violent
events that have happened in Europe very recently or quite recently.
And they swiftly make a connection between the fact that somebody took a truck and
and run into a group of people. Or that somebody was participating in the shooting
or organizing the shooting of people enjoying themselves.They swiftly go from
this to the fact that regulation of the content is needed. Which also, the fact
that you put something in one sentence does not mean it makes sense. Right? So
this is also not very well documented. Again, pressed about this, the
representative of the European Commission said that, well, "We know that and it has
been proven in the investigation, that one of the people that were responsible for
the Bataclan attack actually used the Internet before that happened.
*laughter* Yes. No more comment needed on that one.
So, well, clearly, there are "very good reasons", quote unquote, to spend time
and citizens money on working on the new law. And I always say that
basically these laws are created because, not because there is a reason, but
because there is a do-something-doctrine. Right. We have a problem, we
have to do something. And this is how this law, I think, came to be. And the
do-something-doctrine in this particular case, or also, of course, it encompasses a
very broad and blurry definition of that law. I will talk about this more in a
moment. It also encompasses measures, we, if we define something that we want to
counteract to, we have to basically say what should happen. Right. So that the
problem is being solved. And there are 3 measures that they will also explain. One
is the removal orders. The other is referrals. And the third are so-called
proactive measures. This is, I guess, the part where we touch the prevention
most. And then the third issue is that, the one of the things I also want to talk
about is the links between the content that is being removed and the actual
investigations or prosecutions that may occur, because of course it's possible
that there will be some content found that actually does document the crime. And
then what do we do about that? So, going forward, I do think that the definition
and this law is basically, its main principle is to normalize the state
control over how people communicate and what they wanted to say. As it was said
before, under the premise of terrorism, we can actually pack a lot of different
things because people are afraid of this. And we have also examples from other
topics, other laws that have been debated in Brussels. One was public sector
information directive, where everybody was very happy discussing how much public
information should be released and where it should come from and how people should
have access to it. And a part of public information is the information that is
produced by companies that perform public services, but they may also be private,
for example, sometimes transport, public transport is provided that way. And
actually public transport providers were the ones that were saying that they cannot
release the information that they have, namely timetables and other
information about how the system works that could be useful for citizens
because then it may be used by terrorists. I guess that maybe prevents the potential
terrorists from going from bus stop to bus stop and figuring out how the buses go.
But we already know that this does not work that way. So this is something
that actually normalizes this approach. And let's first look at the definition of
the proposal as presented by the European Commission. So they say
basically, let me read: "Terrorist content means one or more of the following
information. So a) inciting or advocating, including by glorifying, the commission of
terrorist offences". I do apologise for the horrible level of English
that they use, I don't know why and that I don't apologise for them, but for the fact
that they expose you to it. "The commission of terrorist offences,
*Clapping* thereby causing a danger that such acts be
committed". You won't believe how many times I had to read all this to actually
understand what all those things mean. "Encouraging the contribution to terrorist
offences". So contribution could be money, could be some, I guess material resources.
"Promoting the activities of a terrorist group, in particular by encouraging the
participation in or support to a terrorist group. Instructing on methods or
techniques for the purpose of committing terrorist offenses". And then there is
also the definition of "dissemination of terrorist content". That basically means
"making terrorist content available to third parties on the hosting service
providers services". As you can probably see, the dissemination and the fact that
third parties are evoked mean that this law is super broad. So it's not only about
social media because making content available through third parties may mean
that I am sharing something over some sort of service with my mom and she is a third
party in the understanding of this law. So we were actually super troubled to see
that not only does it encompass services that make information available to the
public. So the one that we all can see like social media, but also that
potentially it could be used against services that make, let people communicate
privately. So that is a that is a big issue. The second thing I wanted to direct
your attention to is the parts that they put in italics. It's how soft those
those concepts are, inciting, advocating, glorifying, encouraging, promoting. This
is a law that actually potentially can really influence how we talk and how to
communicate what we wanted to talk about, whether we agree or disagree with certain
policies or certain political decisions. And all those things are super soft. And
it's very, very hard to say what does it really mean. And I want to
give you an example of the same content used in 3 different cases to
illustrate this. So let's imagine we have a group of people that recorded a video
and on those videos, they say that, well, basically they call
themselves terrorists, to make it easier, and they say that they wanted to
commit all sorts of horrible things in specific places, so that constitutes like
some sort of a credible threat. And they also bragged that they killed someone. And
they also say that they're super happy about this and so on. And they also, of
course, encourage others to join them and so on and so on. And the 3 cases would be:
1 would be that this particular group posted videos on, I don't know, their
YouTube channel. The other case would be that there is a media outlet that reports
on it and either links to this video or maybe present snippets of it. And the
third case would be, for example, that there is some sort of group that is
actually following what's happening in that region and collects evidence that can
then help identify the people and prosecute them for the crimes they commit.
Like the crime that's our exemplary terrorists admitted to
committing. And do you think that according to this definition, in your
opinion, do you think that there is a difference between those 3 types of
presenting that content between the terrorist group that is presenting it on
their channel, between the media outlet and between the activists? There is none.
Because this law has nothing, does not define in any way that the so-called
terrorist content is something that is published with an intention of actually
advocating and glorifying. So the problem is that not only does the content that,
let's say, is as weak as we may call it manifestly illegal. So somebody kills
someone and is being recorded and we know it's a crime and perhaps we don't want to
watch it, although I do think that we should also have a discussion in our
society, what we wanted to see and what we don't want to see.
From the fact, from the perspective that the world is complicated and we may
have the right to access all sorts of information, even that is not so
pleasant and not so easy to digest. So this law does not make this
differentiation. There is no mention of how this should be intentional to qualify
to be considered so-called terrorist content. And that's a big problem. So as
you can see, there is a fallacy in this narrative because these will be the member
states and their so-called competent authorities that will be deciding what the
terrorist content is. And, of course, Europeans have a tendency, a tendency to
think we have the tendency to think of ourselves as the the societies and the
nations and the countries that champion the rule of law and that and that actually
respect fundamental rights and expect, respect freedom of speech. But we also
know that this is changing rapidly. And I also will show you examples of how that
changes in this area that we're talking about right now. So. So I do not have
great trust in in European governments into making the correct judgment about
that. So. So we have this category of very dubious and and very broad terrorist
content. And then, so how it's how it's being done. The, the basically all that
power to decide what the content, like how to deal with that content, is actually
outsourced to private actors. So the platforms that we are talking about
becomes kind of mercenaries because both the commission and I guess many
member states say, well, it's not possible that the judge will actually look through
content that is placed online and give, you know, proper judiciary decisions about
what should, what constitute freedom of expression and what goes beyond it.
Because it hurts other people or is basically a proof of something illegal.
So the platforms will take those decisions. This will be the hosting
service providers, as I mentioned. And then also a lot of the reliance that they
will do it right is put into the wishful thinking in this proposal that says, well,
basically, you have to put in terms of service that you will not host terrorist
content. So then that again, there is a layer in there where the platform,
let's say Facebook or Twitter or any anyone else actually decides what and how
they wanted to deal with that in detail. Also, one thing I didn't mention is that
looking for this regulation and looking at who is the platform that should basically
have those terms of service we realize that Wikimedia that actually our platforms
will actually be in the scope of that. So not only that may affect the way we can
document and reference the articles that are appearing on Wikipedia, on all those
all those, on the events that are described or the groups or the political
situation and what not. But also that, you know, our community of editors will have
less and less to say if we have to put a lot of emphasis on terms of service. I
just think that we are somehow a collateral damage of this. But also this
doesn't console me much because, of course, Internet is bigger than than our
projects. And also, we want to make sure that, that content is not being removed
elsewhere. So basically the 3 measures are the removal orders, as I mentioned. And
this is something that is fairly, fairly straightforward. And actually, I'm
wondering why there has to be a special law to bring it, because, to being
because the removal order is basically a decision that the competent authority in
the member state releases and sends it to the platform. The problem is that
according to the commission, the platform should actually act on it in 1 hour. And
then again, we ask them why 1 hour and not 74 minutes? And they say, "Well, because
we actually know", I don't know how, but they say they do. Let's take it at face
value. "We actually know that the content is the most, you know, viral and spreads
the fastest within, has the biggest range within the 1 hour from appearance". And
then we ask them "Well, but how can you know that? Actually, the people that find
the content find it exactly on the moment when it comes up. Maybe it has been around
for 2 weeks and this 1 hour window when it went really viral is like long gone". And
here they don't really answer, obviously. So this is one of the measures
that I guess makes the most sense out of all of that. Then we have the referrals
that we call lazy removal orders. And this is this is really
something that is very puzzling for me because the referral is a situation in
which this competent authority and the person working there goes through the
content, through the videos or postings and looks at it and says, "Well, I think,
I think it's against the terms of service of this platform, but does not actually
release this removal order, but writes to the platform, let's them know and say,
"Hey, can you please check this out?" I'm sorry, I'm confused, is this the time that
I have left or the time? OK, good, time is important here. So so basically, you know,
they are basically, won't spend the time to prepare this removal order
and right and take let the platform to, tell the platform actually to remove it.
But they will just ask them to please verify whether this content should be
there or not. And first of all, this is the real outsourcing of power
over the speech and expression. But also we know how platforms take those
decisions. They have a very short time. The people that do it are sitting
somewhere, most probably where the content is not originating from. So they don't
understand the context. Sometimes they don't understand the language. And also,
you know, it's better to get rid of it just in case it really is problematic,
right? So this is something that is completely increased this great gray area
of information that is controversial enough to be flagged, but it's not illegal
enough to be removed by the order. By the way, the European Parliament actually
kicked this out from their version. So now the fight is in this negotiation between
the 3 institutions to actually follow this recommendation and just remove it, because
it really does not make sense. And it really makes the people that
release those referrals not really accountable for their decisions
because they don't take the decision. They just make a suggestion. And then we have
the proactive measures, which most definitely will lead to over-policing of
content. There is a whole, a very clever description in the law that basically
boils down to the point that if you are going to use content filtering and if
you're going to prevent content from disappearing, then basically you are
doing a good job as a platform. And this is the way to actually deal with
terrorist content. Since, however we define it, again, this is very
context-oriented, very context-dependent. It's really very difficult to say based on
what sort of criteria and based, based on what sort of databases those
automated processes will be, will be happening. So, of course,
as it happens in today's world, Somebody privatizes
the profits, but the losses are always socialized. And this is now no
exception from that rule. So, again, when we were talking to the European Commission
and asking them, "Why is this not a piece of legislation that belongs to the
enforcement of the law?" And that is then not controlled by a heavily by the
judiciary system and by any other sort of oversight, that enforcements usually had.
"They have, well, because, you know, when we have those videos of beheadings,
they usually don't happen in Europe and they are really beyond our jurisdiction".
So, of course, nobody will act on it. On the very meaningful level of
actually finding the people that that are killing,
that are in the business of killing others and making
sure they cannot continue with this activity. So it's very clear that this
whole law is about cleaning the Internet and not really about a meaningfully
tackling societal problems that lead to that sort of violence. Also the
redress, which is the mechanism in which the user can say, hey, this is not the
right decision. I actually believe this content is not illegal at all. And it's
important for me to say this and this is my right and I want it to be up. Those,
those provisions are very weak. You cannot actually protest meaningfully against a
removal order of your content. Of course, you can always take states, the states to
court. But we know how amazingly interesting that is and how fast it
happens. So that, so we can I think we can agree that there is no meaningful way
to actually protest. Also, the state may ask, well, actually, this this removal
order should... the user should not be informed that the content has been has
been taken down because of terrorism. So. Or depicting terrorism or glorifying
or whatever. So even you may not even know why the content is taken down. It will be
a secret. For referrals and for proactive measures, well, you know what? Go talk to
the platform and protest with them. And then, of course, the other question is, so
who is the terrorist? Right. Because this is a very important question that that we
should have answered if we wanted to... if we wanted to have a law that actually is
meaningfully engaging with those issues. And of course, well, the as you know
already from what I said, the European Commission in that particular case does
not provide a very good answer. But we have some other responses to that. For
example, Europol has created a report and then there was a blog post based on that.
On the title "On the importance of taking down non-violent terrorist content".
So we have the European Commission that says, "Yes, it's about the beheadings and
about the mutilations". And we have Europol that says, "You know, actually
this non-violent terrorist content is super important". So basically what they
say and I quote, "Poetry is a literary medium that is widely appreciated across
the Arab world and is an important part of their region's identity. Mastering it
provides the poet with singular authority in Arabic culture. The most prominent
jihadi leaders - including Osama bin Laden and former Islamic State spokesman
Abu Muhammad al-Adnadi - frequently included poetry in their
speeches or wrote poems of their own. Their charisma was
closely intertwined with their mastery of poetry."
So we can see the art that is being made by Europol between a very important aspect
of a culture that is beautiful and enriching and about the fact that this,
that, that Europol wants it to see it weaponized. The other part of the blogpost
was about how ISIS presents interesting activities that their members... their,
their... their fighters have. And one of them is that they are enjoying themselves
and smiling and spending time together and swimming. So what? How do we, what do we
make out of that? So the video of some brown people swimming are now
terrorist content? This is... the blatant racism of, of this, of this communication
really enrages me. And I think it's really a shame that that nobody called Europol
out on this, when the blogpost came up. We also have laws in Europe that are
different. I mean, this is not the same legislation, but that actually give the...
give the the taste of what may happen. One is the the Spanish law against hate
speech. And, and this is an important part. It didn't happen online, but it
shows the approach, that basically first you have legislators that say, oh, don't
worry about this, we really want to go after bad guys. And then what happens is
that there was a puppeteer performance done by 2 people, "The Witch and Don
Christóbal" and the puppets were actually... this is the kind of
Punch and Judy performance in which, this is a genre of, of theater, theatric
performances, I'm sorry. That is kind of full of silly jokes and and sometimes
excessive and and unjustified violence and, and the, and the full of bad taste.
And this is quite serious. And the, the 2 characters in the, the 2 puppets held the
banner that featured a made-up terrorist organization. And after that performance,
actually, they were charged with, first of all, promoting terrorism, even though
there is no terrorist organization like that. And then also with inciting,
inciting hatred. And this is what's one of the puppeteers said after describing this
whole horrible experience. Finally, the charges were dropped. So this is good. But
I think this really sums up who is the terrorists and how those laws are being
used against people who actually have nothing to do with, with violence. We were
charged with inciting hatred, which is a felony created in theory to protect
vulnerable minorities, the minorities in this case where the church,
the police and the legal system. *laughter*
Then, again in Spain, I don't want to single out this beautiful country, but
actually, unfortunately, they have good examples. This is a very recent
one. So Tsunami Democràtic in Catalonia created an app to actually help people
organize small action in a decentralized manner. And they placed the documentations
on GitHub. And it was taken down by the order of, of the Spanish court. And also
the - and this is the practical application of such laws online - also,
the website of Tsunami Democràtic was taken down by the court. Of course,
both of that on charges of of facilitating terrorist
activities and inciting to terrorism. So why is it important?
Because of what comes next. So there will be the Digital Services Act,
which will be an overhaul of this idea that I mentioned at the beginning, which
is that basically platform are not responsible by default, by what we put
online. And European Commission and other, the European Commission and other
actors in the EU are toying with the idea that maybe platforms should be somehow
responsible. So, of course. And it's not only about social media, but basically
anybody that any sort of, of a service that helps people place content online.
And then, the, one of the ideas, we don't know what it's going to be, it's not
there yet. It's going to happen at the beginning of the next year, so
quite soon. But we can actually expect that the so-called "Good Samaritan"
rule will be 1 of the solutions proposed. What is this rule? This rule basically
means if a platform is really going the extra mile and doing a good job in
removing the content, that is what... that is either illegal or again or again, a
very difficult category, harmful. I also don't know what that exactly means. Then
if they behave well, then they will not be held responsible. So this is basically a
proposal that you cannot really turn down, because if you run the business, you want
to manage the risk of that and you don't want to be fined. And you and you don't
want to pay, pay money. So, of course, you try and overpolice and of course you try
and you filter the content and of course you take content when it only raises a
question what sort of... what sort of content that is. Is it neutral or
is it maybe, you know, making somebody offended or... or stirred? And, of course,
other attempts, we heard it from Germany. Which is basically that there wasn't a
proposal to actually make... oblige.. like make platforms obliged to give passwords
of users of social media. The people that are under investigation or prosecution.
And also, of course, we see that one of the ideas that supposedly is going to fix
everything is that, well, if terrorists communicate through encrypted services,
then maybe we should do something about encryption. And there was a petition
already on (?) to actually go in to actually forbid encryption for those
services after one of the one of the terrorist attacks. So, of course, it
sounds, it sounds very extreme. But this is, in my opinion, the next the next
frontier here. So what can we do? Because this is all quite difficult. So as I
mentioned, the negotiations are still on. So there is still time to talk to
your government. And this is very import because, of course, the governments, when
they have this idea... they have this proposal on the table, that they will be
able to decide finally who is the terrorist and what is the terrorist
content. And also, that's on one hand. On the other hand, they know that people
don't really care all that much about what happens in the E.U., which is
unfortunately true. They are actually supporting very much the commission's
proposals. The only thing that they don't like is the fact that somebody from the
police, from other country can maybe interfere with content in their language,
because that's one of the provisions that that also is there. So, so this is what
they don't like. They want to keep their there the territoriality of their
enforcement laws intact. But there is still time and we can still do this. And
if you want to talk to me about what are the good ways to do it, I'm
available here. And I would love to take that conversation up with you. The other
is a very simple measure that I believe is is always working. Is one that basically
is about telling just 1 friend, even 1 friend, and asking them to do the same to
talk to other people about this. And there are 2 reasons to do it. One is because, of
course, then we make people aware of what it happens. And the other in this
particular case that is very important is that basically people are scared of
terrorism and, and they support a lot of measures just because they hear this word.
And when we explain, that, what that really means and when we unpack this a
little bit, we build the resilience to those arguments. And I think it's
important. The other people who should know about this
are activists working with vulnerable groups because of the
stigmatization that I already mentioned and because
of the fact that we need to document horrible things that are happening to
people in other places in the world and also here in Europe. And journalists
and media organizations, because they will be affected by this law. And by the
way, how they can report and where they can they can get the sources for their
information. So I think I went massively over time from what it was planned. I hope
we can still have some questions. Thank you. So, yeah. Talk to me more about this
now and then after the talk. Thank you.
*applause*
Herald: Thanks for your talk. We still have time for questions, so please, if you
have a question, line up at the mics. We have 1, 2, 3 evenly distributed through
the room. I want to remind you really quickly that a question normally is one
sentence and ends with a question mark. *laughter*
Not everybody seems to know that. So we start with mic number 2.
Mic2: Hello. I... so I run Tor Relays in the United States. It seems like a lot of
these laws are focused on the notion of centralized platforms. Do they define what
a platform is and are they going to extradite me because I am facilitating Tor
Onion service? A: Should we answer, no?
H: Yeah. A: Okay, yes, so they do and they don't
in a way that the definition it's based on basically what
the the hosting provider is in in the European law is
actually very broad. So it doesn't take into account the fact how big you are or
how you run your services. The bottom line is that if you allow people to put content
up and share it with, again, 3rd party, which may be the whole room here, it may
be the whole world but it may be just the people I want to share things to with.
Then then you're obliged to to use the measures that are... or, or to comply with
the measures that are envisioned in this regulation. And there is a there's a
debate also in the parliament. It was taken up and narrowed down actually to the
communication to the public. So I guess then as you correctly observe, it is more
about about the big platforms or about the centralized services. But actually the, in
the commission version, nothing makes me believe that, that only then will be
affected. On the contrary, also the, the messaging services may be.
H: Okay, um, next question, mic number 3. Mic3: Is it, uh, a photo with the upload
filters, the copyright directive, it was really similar debate, especially on
small companies, because, um, uh, at that time, the question was they tried to push
upload filters for copyright content. And the question was, uh, how does that fit
with small companies? And they still haven't provided an answer to that. Uh,
the problem is they took the copyright directive and basically inspired
themselves from the upload filters and applied it to terrorist content. And it's
again, the question, how does that work with small Internet companies that have to
have someone on call during the nights and things like that. So even big
providers, I heard they don't have the means to, to properly enforce that
something like this, this is a killer for the European Internet industry.
A: Yes. *laughter*
*applause* H: I want to give a short reminder on the
1 sentence rule. We have a question from the Internet. Signal angel, please.
Signal Angel: Yes, what, the question is, wouldn't decentralized social networks
bypass these regulations? A: I'm not a lawyer, but I will give a
question, I give an answer to this question that the lawyer would give,
I maybe spent too much time with lawyers. That depends.
*laughter* A: Because it really does, because this
definition of who is obliged is so broad that a lot depends on the context, a lot
depends on what is happening, what is being shared and how. So it's, it's very
difficult to say. I just want to say that we also had this conversation about
copyright and many people came to me last year at Congress. I wasn't giving a talk
about it, but I was at the talk about the copyright directive and the filtering. And
many people said, well, actually, you know, if you're not using those services,
you will not be affected. And actually, when we share peer to peer, then this is
not an issue. But actually, this is changing. And there is actually
a decision of the European Court of Justice. And the decisions are not like
basically the law, but basically they are very often then followed and
incorporated. And this is the... and this is the decision on the Pirate Bay and
in... on Pirate Bay. And in this decision, the court says that, well, the argument
that Pirate Bay made was basically we're not hosting any content. We're just
connecting people with it. And in short, and the court said, well,
actually, we don't care. Because you organize it, you optimize it, you like
the info, you optimize the information, you bring it to people.
And the fact that you don't share it does not really mean anything. And
you are liable for the, for the copyright infringements. So, again, this is about a
different issue, but this is a very relevant way of thinking that we may
expect that it will be translated into other types of content. So, again, the
fact that that you don't host anything but you just connect people to one another
will not be... may not be something that, that will take you off the hook.
H: Microphone number 3. Mic3: Do these proposals contain or...
what sort of repercussions do these proposals contained for filing a request,
removal requests that are later determined to be illegitimate? Is this just a free
pass to censor things? Or can.... are there repercussions?
A: You... just want to make sure I understand, you mean the removal orders,
the ones that say remove content, and that's it?
Mic3: Yeah. If somebody files a removal order that is determined later to be
completely illegitimate. Are there repercussions?
A: Well, the problem starts even before that because again, the removal orders are
being issued by competent authorities. So there's like a designated authority that
can do it. Not everybody can. And basically, the order says this is the
content. This is the URL. This is the legal basis. Take it down. So there is no
way to protest it. And the platform can only not follow this order within 1 hour
in 2 situations. One is that the force majeure, that is usually the issue.
Basically, there's some sort of external circumstance that prevents them from
doing it. I don't know. Complete power outage
or problem with their servers that basically they cannot
access and remove or block access to this content. The other is if the
request... the removal order, I'm sorry, contains errors that actually make it
impossible to do. So, for example, there is no URL or it's broken and it doesn't
lead anywhere. And these are the only 2 situations. In the rest, the content has
to be removed. And there is no way for the user and no way for the platform
to actually say, well, hold on, this is not the way to do it. And therefore, after
it's being implemented to say, well, that was a bad decision. As I said, you can
always go to court with the, with your state, but not many people will do it.
And this is not really a meaningful way to address this.
H: Next question. Mic number 3. Mic3: How many... how much time do we have
to contact the parliamentarians to inform them maybe that there is some big issue
with this? What's the worst case timetable at the moment?
A: That's a very good question. And thank you for asking because... this ... because
I forgot to mention this. That actually is quite urgent. So the commission wanted to,
like usually, in those situations, the commission wanted to close the thing until
the end of the year and they didn't manage it because there is no, no agreement
on those most pressing issues. But we expect that the, the best
case scenario is that until March, maybe until June, it will probably happen
earlier. It may be the next couple of months. And there will be lots of meetings
about about that. So this is more or less the timeline. It's, there's no sort of
external deadline for this, right, so this is just an estimation and of course,
it may change, but, but this is what we expect.
H: We have another question from the Internet.
S: Does this law considers that such content is used for psychological
warfare by big nations? A: I'm sorry. I... Again, please.
S: This, this content is, pictures or video of whatsever, does this law
consider that such content is used for psychological warfare?
A: Well, I'm trying to see how that relates. I think the law is... does not go
into details like that in a way. Which means that I can go back to the definition
that basically it's just about the fact that if the content appears to be positive
about terrorist activities, then that's the basis of taking it down. But there's
nothing else that is being actually said about that. It's not more nuanced than
that. So I guess the answer is no. H: One last question from mic number 2.
Mic2: Are there, in... any case studies published on successful application of
alike laws in other countries? I asked because we have alike laws in
Russia for 12 years and it's not that useful as far as I see.
A: Not that I know of. So I think it's also a very difficult
thing to research because we can only research what, what we
know that happened. Right? In a way that you have to have people that actually are
vocal about this and that complain about these laws not being enforced in the
proper way. So, for example, content that taken down is completely about something
else, which also sometimes happens. And, and that's very difficult. I think
the biggest question here is whether there is an amount of studies
documenting that something does not work that would prevent the European Union from
actually having this legislative fever. And I would argue that not, because, as
they said, they don't have really good arguments or they don't really have good
numbers to justify bringing this law at all. Not to mention bringing the
ridiculous measures that they propose. So what we say sometimes
in Brussels when we're very frustrated that we we were hoping, you
know, being there and advocating for for human rights, is that we... we hoped
for... that we can contribute to evidence based policy. But actually, what's
happening, it's a policy based evidence. And, and this is the difficult part. So I
am all for studies and I am all for presenting information that, you know, may
possibly help legislators. There are definitely some MEP or some people there,
even probably in the commission. Maybe they just are not allowed to voice
their opinion on this because it's a highly political issue that would wish to
have those studies or would wish to be able to use them. And that believe in
that. But it's just, it doesn't translate into the political process.
H: Okay. Time's up. If you have any more questions, you can come
up and approach Anna later. A: Yes.
H: There is please. Thanks. So first for me.
Thanks for the talk. Thanks for patiently answer...
*36c3 postroll music*
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