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[Music]
now um it's my very great pleasure to
give the word over um for the talk dear
MEP free software infrastructure for
online campaigning in the EU and please
give a hand of Applause to our
[Applause]
speakers thank you that you join us lat
at night uh we are very happy that we
can um to a little bit of an
introduction and an announcement to the
free software that we are developing my
name is thas l I'm executive director of
epicenter works and Austrian dig rights
organization and also vice president of
Edy the umbrella of almost all digital
rights NOS working in the European Union
and I'm here joined today with Tim Viber
right I'm Tim or Sky um I don't have as
many titles I'm a free software or I'm a
freelance software developer um and I've
been around this whole chaos family
since like 2005 or something like that
so
yeah great
yeah let's get started there's a little
bit of U theoretical overview and then
we will show you a preview and mind you
that there is also access to the tool
available for everyone here at Camp um
the URL will be uh announced later and
we also had handouts uh but first let's
explain a little bit why we are here um
can you do the next slide yeah exactly
so what's the theory of change why are
we doing this our basic idea is that
political decisions worsen when
politicians are left alone particularly
with difficult things like internet
regulation technology regulation is
inherently difficult and uh we believe
that uh our community that the hacker
community that people that are actually
living in the internet have important
things to say and that uh in today's
world particularly young people and
people that are very much connected with
the internet should be heard when
politicians are making laws about
technology ology and about the internet
and our tool tries to bridge that divide
our tool tries to connect citizens and
average users with their political
decision makers in our case members of
the European parliaments MEPS so those
people that we elect every four years
that sit uh in the European Parliament
in Brussels and then Strasburg and make
this very important
decisions and uh those 705 MEPS come
from all countries of the EU those peop
are elected by us they should be
accountable to us and in uh the way the
European Union works whenever a law is
made the parliamentarians have their say
and there is a complex system between
Brussels and Strasburg and various
committees where every law has to be
voted on various stages until you have a
final piece of text that is the official
position of the European Parliament and
it doesn't matter if you go back to the
sofware patterns from the '90s or the
ddpr or net neutrality copyright it is
always the case that we usually have our
best chance to adhere to civil rights to
enshrine fundamental rights in the law
with those 705 members of European
Parliament those are the people that we
vote for not some government officials
from Ministries and that's why they are
best chance to have future proof
legislation adopted for half a billion
people in the biggest Market in the
world which is the EU and you know that
the EU often sets Global standards so we
really believe that we need to look
closely for the quality of those
decisions
and uh what we did in the past in 20134
with safety internet. was that we sent
faxes to the members of the European
Parliament uh back then it was the
beautiful case that when you send a fox
to an me they all have their office they
all have their staff uh it's a physical
office they have and in there is a
multifunctional printer and when you
send a fox to that printer it gets
printed out on paper and you cannot
disconnect the fox without also
disconnecting the printer so we hacked
that basically for net neutrality back
then and so many trees were killed in
the process I have to say but this was
really efficient um I still remember the
stories from Liberal politicians fdp
from Germany where the politician was
really not our friend but because every
morning he had a pile of of paper on his
desk from citizens that wanted to have
their opinion heard by this politician
and the staff was really had this pile
of paper every day so they couldn't
ignore the citizens opinion and that's
also one of the reasons why we won in
first reading in the European Parliament
for net neutrality and then we continued
on you all remember upload filters
Article 13 in the copyright directive
and back in 2019 we did a similar
campaign but but because we were so
successful with the foxes foxes are no
longer available in the printer they are
now received in Outlook that means they
are also in the spam filter they are no
longer a viable way to reach the
politician telephone still is and in a
very Hasty campaign in 2019 we actually
developed a call tool where people could
call their members of European
Parliament not just once but also having
a call subscription where every day you
would be connected to the same
politician from your country um and it
was a way for us to really make a
difference uh even allies of ours like
marit Shaka from the liberal Dutch party
d66 said that was really helpful but
never do it again because whenever we
were in the office the phone was ringing
and whenever you are done with that one
citizen the phone would ring again so
that was a very efficient way to reach
parliamentarians in 2019 but sadly that
softer was a really ugly piece of thing
that we just developed hastely and it's
not usable it was never open sourced
because of it is yeah it it wouldn't be
something that's stably usable for many
campaigns and that's why we created
drme the basic premise of this tool is
that yes this will be disturbing yes
politicians would rather prefer being
left alone with their power without
hearing from their constituency but we
believe it's time that they are
accountable to the citizens and that
they need to listen to the opinions from
experts and we all are experts here in
the room when it comes to technology I
think all of us have valuable things to
contribute to this difficult problem of
regulation of tech and these tools that
we are developing here are common place
in the US you have many tools that call
Congress is one example in the UK this
is very common that you get connected
with your Member of Parliament in the
House of Commons in the U this is really
not something that's done and we would
like to fill that
Gap and one thing that we do here is not
just to offer a phone tool that makes it
very easy to connect with politicians we
are also focusing on the movable medal
in every political decision there is a
side that you've already won like take
let's take chat control you don't need
to convince Patrick Brier from the
pirate party he is already on our side
you will also never convince Axel Frost
from the CDU from the conservatives what
you have to focus on if you really want
to get a majority is to focus on the
movable middle on those politicians that
are yet left undecided that can still be
convinced with good arguments if they
hear from people in their own language
that truly care about the issue they
have to vote upon we believe that
focusing on that movable midle with
giving people a voice is a great way to
actually increase the quality of the
laws that get
adopted and so to sum things up what we
try to solve with this tool is to really
make it easy for users to engage with
the EU the EU is a difficult Beast there
is bres there's St books there are 705
MVPs you really have a hard time trying
to even get your opinion to the person
that could theoretically vote on this
and so we try to abstract everything
that concerns the EU Machinery you only
need to care about the issue and make
your own voice
heard um of course if you do
International C it should usually be a
cost particularly if you do this
seriously there could be roaming charges
depending on the price of your mobile
phone contract that will not be the case
with our tool CU we call the user there
has no cost at all for a
citizen uh we believe that we have an
obligation as uh providers of this tool
to really maximize the time that people
are donating the users are volunteers
they don't get paid for that they care
about something and really making the
most out of the 20 15 30 minutes uh week
that they want to contribute for an
issue is Our obligation and that's why
we try to maximize the impact from every
phone call um as I said don't call us we
call you and most importantly and that's
the difference to the copyright campaign
we did in 2019 this is a white label
solution so it will be usable for this
rights campaigns but also for climate
for migration issues for any issue that
people care about and that's also why we
release the software under hpl license
because it's our belief that the path to
Parliament should be as long or as short
for everybody in a democracy everybody
should have equality when it comes to
influencing politicians and decision
makers and I think that's yeah there's
also a concept note um we haven't
published this yet but that's freely
available for people that want to engage
it gives a good outline of what we try
to achieve what also future development
steps would be but uh let's leave it at
uh the the theoretical level and I would
love to show you the demonstration of
the tool that we already have um right
yeah so that's the demo so this is where
things can actually go wrong right um so
as you can see I'll just um we have
handouts for the people who are there um
that's the URL it's uh live right now
it's chat control. dear
m.u um just uh a small announcement this
is live and accessible for the camp
right now we will probably like um
password protected later on at at some
point so uh if you're watching a
recording of and you can't access the
site um yeah then it's over um so what
you see here is basically uh the the
page you're seeing um when you when you
first uh open the open the tool you can
uh switch the language so right now we
have it available in uh German English
and Swedish and as I said here's where
things go wrong right um let me just
refresh this real
quick let's hope we have an internet
connection here internet conferences are
prone to weak internet connection but
the thing is I have a local I have a
local instance running as well so I can
just use that right okay so yeah you can
you can switch a language and also
there's a geolocation built in so
whenever you access the site for the
first time uh it will detect which
country you are coming from um this is
all done without third party services so
we really focus a lot on uh on privacy
here so you can see there's a lot of uh
there's a lot of countries in the EU and
I can simply say okay I'm from the
Netherlands and uh it will suggest a
member of parliament from there to me um
so this is basically what the system
thinks that or one of the persons that
the system thinks that would be
beneficial to call um if you don't like
calling this particular person you can
always press this uh refresh button and
it will suggest someone different um but
you can also say if you like um you can
also use the search function right now
if you just click it it will show you
every MP from the Netherlands but you
can also search for your favorite uh
politician or something like that and uh
just select that one so um we also have
here uh a lot of social media profiles
and other ways to contact these persons
um also the the phone numbers for
example are there's um like a calendar
built in because uh they switch between
Brussels and stas uh Strasburg so um the
system will always give you the right uh
number for where they are right now and
um yeah if I just have this person I
would if I want to call Axel Force right
now I could say call now so and here we
are uh at the point where you have to
give us your phone number that's the
only uh piece of identification from you
that we get and I mean without your
phone number we can't connect you so
that's fair game I think um so it just
enters some kind of phone number and I
uh yes I have read and accepted the
privacy policy by the way we already
have a working privacy policy if you're
interested in that and um so it's uh I
click it it sends me a code on my mobile
phone oh yeah all right my code is um 1
2 3 4 5 6 of course and I verified this
so um yeah we are now successfully
verified with this number and we can now
start a call so what would happen in
this instance not right now um is that
um our phone would ring we would pick up
the phone and some nice voice maybe of
Thomas or someone else would would say
okay hi this is the m would you like to
be connected to axle force and um then
you could like press one or two or
something something like that and uh you
could you would be connected to the
office of Axel Force so let's click
Start call and we'll call you right away
and as you can see there are talking
points right here so um ignore this for
a moment we this is just uh the the
mockup so um this is already showing
what would what you would see if the
call were over so we have a lot of
talking points which you can scroll
through during your call to Aid you in
um
yeah in in in uh talking to the person
and um after the call you are able to
give some feedback like were you able to
convince the person um let's get yes
with ax F come on let's
say F voted against the
um uh terminology like the the thing
that just uh reclassified coold Power as
green he was actually with uh uh Fridays
for future so axelos is convincible on
some issues let's not give hope up on it
and the beauty of that here is that of
course the system is learning if enough
people have said yeah I have convinced
this politician they will actually move
to the green corner and be out of the
movable middle so the system is actually
learning you don't need to divide up of
exra sheets the members of parliament
everybody can just use that tool and you
are always connected to the person who
is most likely to
uh be influenced who can make a
difference and the system always learns
from the users that are using it right
so you can give an additional feedback
if you want to and then we just click
submit so we're back on the page uh we
could like instantly choose another
person and uh let's show us right the
the second feature we can also call
later so what's call later um call lator
allows you to um enter a schedule like
maybe you're like okay I have time like
each uh Tuesday at around I don't know
13:30 um to talk to a politician because
that's right after my lunch break I am
in a good mood and I would like to talk
to a politician um and on Thursday my
lunch break is basically on 1:00 or
something like that so you can uh enter
different times for different work dayss
or you can just leave it like that and
you can say
confirm and basically that's it so what
would happen right now is the system
would call you on Tuesday at 13:30 or
around 13:30 and um ask you like do you
have time right now do you want to be
connected to be L Patrick and uh yeah
and the reason for that is that uh we
know that particularly for nerds maybe
for everybody speaking with foreign
people people is not easy we know that
this is a high ask that actually picking
up the phone speaking with politicians
is a big favor we are asking from people
but those people that are willing to do
this once most likely will do it again
and by maximizing this this slow
conversion rate of those people that
truly care that really want to speak
with their parliamentarian and letting
that do it again maybe get really good
at it that's also a beauty of the storm
again like we are we are nudging people
whenever we call you there will be the
option press nine and the subscription
is cancelled and as I said like there's
a privacy policy already in place the
gdpr compliant yes we adhere to the law
um and we are very strict with the the
data that we process most phone numbers
are hashed and encrypted only in active
call subscriptions where we need the
number to connect to then we have it
actually in the database but we try to
be as privacy preserving and minimalist
IC as possible with all of that um and
as we are out of time I would just
briefly like to say before go to Q&A
that um this tool right now will be
applied for uh the chat control campaign
we are still in development we also here
to talk with the community to get your
feedback and your input maybe also get
some help with testing penetration
testing development and so forth um but
uh at this stage it's really something
that we after chat control is passed
Hope to release in this hpl license that
we have something that's forever truly
available for the community to engage
with MEPS thank
[Applause]
you thank you so much for your talk um
so um you have we have decided
beforehand that you are going to to do
the
um the Q&A offline outside of the tent
because we have been are out of time
here for this stage but the these two
speakers will still be available for
your questions just we won't be um using
our kind um Angel team back there for
the technician te technology there so um
thank you all for coming here um please
give another round of applause to our
[Applause]
[Music]
speakers