talk control

which is held by Kirsten fila and Mayan Fernandez from European digital rights and estelle mass from access now. Thank you very much Yes, well good morning everyone it's a little bit early so thank you very much for coming

So welcome to this talk on control. So my name is Kirsten. I'm Marianne and I'm Estelle. Hi And so two years after the first Snowden revelations Mainstream media has become much more aware about well surveillance by states and also by corporations

So we've been asking ourselves Where is the resistance from this movement and why are there still so many people thinking that they have nothing to hide and therefore? nothing to hear So we've been thinking about these two bits and we came out with two reasons or two main reasons

The first one is because of the intangible nature of surveillance is what Sasha Lobo called productivity and the second main reason is because this is often a very part of this bigger picture a bigger game of control and Everyone here in public. I think will agree with me that information is power nowadays

And then we're living in what a G in the dealers called a society of control where everything is monitored and Nothing is left alone for long. So here today We're gonna talk about three things in terms of control our life in general our thoughts and our movement

So first of all Why? these three fields and not something else well because we have just one hour and because we don't want to bore you and we Think that these three are very important things that we hope you enjoy So now I'm gonna talk about how the Internet is being used to control our lives by three actors

That's in our life So the first ones are governments the second ones are companies and the third one ourselves. Yes ourselves So first one our governments if we look back in history We see that a lot of totalitarian countries actually had two things in mind First of all was control and the second one was power and how different is that from nowadays?

So letting aside our democratic foundation actually, the the answer is better little in our opinion So we see and it's not a big surprise for you guys that the NSA and other surveillance agencies Wants to have a total control of the population

But also Law enforcement authorities actually in the European Union are seeking to do more in different fields such as terrorism hate speech or so-called radicalization whatever that means in terms of service and I didn't know that I don't know if you know that there's a proposal of a directive on combating terrorism that actually Says that if you threaten to kidnap for example, let's say

Your prime minister's son and if you unduly compel him to do something to commit any act Then you would be likely to be a terrorist and then member state should punish you and so in practice it if I treat that Apparently according to this proposal of a directive. I would be a terrorist. I don't think I'm a terrorist

I don't know if you think I am a terrorist. I hope I but this talk I proof I am NOT so Also a second element of controlling our lives comes from companies It is not a surprise to you that you know when you use Facebook Twitter LinkedIn or even when you read newspapers

It is not for free your data what you do online your behavior comes with a price So a clear example of how this works is targeted advertisements It's not a surprise to you. I guess that when you actually imagine that you're looking for for address or For some trousers and then afterwards you go to other websites or to your social media sites you see targeted advertisement about

clothes and related things and it's like Oh, this is very interesting because like a couple of days ago a couple of months ago I was looking exactly for that. What a coincidence. I love these sites, right? Well, I I think it's for me disturbing that when I am writing an email

in hotmail I actually see ads on my right about the content that I've been in changing with my contacts I don't know if it's a term for you, but this is the reality So say the second thing is the Internet of Things So here you can see different types of devices that you may use because you may think that they're convenient

So there's different fitness fitness trackers that would allow you apparently to become thinner You can also have a mattress So if you suspect that that is called a smart dress as a Spanish invention that apparently if you Have a suspicion that your partner is

Not being faithful then these awesome Smartress because everything's smart like my smartphone and like all these smartphones they will tell you if If he or she is using the mattress while you're not there. Yes, how cool right because we only have bits and Also, we have other devices like the mellow mind which also

tracks your brain waves and actually Afterwards matches the music According to your brain waves, it's very interesting, but I don't know if you're you're Happy to share all these data with with companies And then many examples that would lead to what Bruce Snyder calls the Internet of Things will be the world's biggest robot

Where do you not have the control but somebody else has a control and you don't even know what? Control of what you would need. I would like to have because you don't even know the data that is being out there So the third element of the control of our lives is by ourselves

I'll show you so before so I want to introduce you to this guy. His name is Chris Nancy He doesn't believe in privacy. He says But so in 2008, he decided like well a lot of companies are monitoring out life So I want to know what kind of data they have about about myself about himself

He's he said and then so what he did is to connect himself to all of the devices he could think of Into his body and his house and he created different databases to have an overview of how he could improve his life So he became thinner and he apparently is happier and what I think is very interesting even though I'm a privacy advocate

Is that he says that we want people to behave like machines and we expect machines to behave like people So I would like you to think about that because I think he has a very good point on that And I don't know if that's the world we want to to believe in and to yeah to for the future

The second example, I would like to introduce you is Rob Spence He actually lost his sight of the of his right eye when he was nine, so he's a filmmaker So he thought that it would be nice to actually replace his flawed eye with a camera, so He is kind of a pirate some most of the times he says that he doesn't use

This camera all the time But so I can imagine that I don't know if you will be comfortable if you see rough in the street And then he's not wearing the patch and then he's talking to you Would you be comfortable if he was recording all all your conversations or your movements or you know?

He says that he doesn't do it, but there's no means to to see whether that would happen or not Right. So in the end what we end up with is the internet of me So we might well be moving from the Internet of Things to the Internet of Me according to Andre Spicer and Sederstrom their Swedish

Researchers that actually came to that conclusion and actually I agree in the sense that nowadays is not your internet It's it's not it's all about you, but without you being in control and we need to regain that control But in that sense, I'm actually very interested in another part of our lives and that's here our thoughts

So Kirsten, do you have anything to say about? Okay, so next part Where we see that there's control is Actually our thinking and well, thanks to technological developments in the past years There's so many new possibilities for media control and this then takes the control of our

Thinking also to a whole new level So there's multiple ways in which different actors mostly governments try to control the media in order to influence the debate and then to influence thoughts and actions and thereby control society and

Well contrary to what you might think now. This is not only a very common characteristic to repressive regimes, but it happens also In Countries belonging to the European Union. So what is media control and how does this affect our thinking?

First Example is our political spins. I don't you don't see it very well Anyways, political spins are a very old art form that goes back to the ancient Greeks So spins are not only a method for governments

But also for companies in order to advance their agendas either to make you vote for something or not Oppose yourself to a certain policy or to make you buy something and Well spins are basically biased interpretations of events on use In order to convince the public of a certain goal

And spins don't always need to do to be a bad thing because NGOs do it too, right? We all try to spin the news But we only need to be concerned when a spin becomes so dominant that it becomes propaganda and

Nowadays spins don't only come from one direction anymore, for example from one politician Spins come from everywhere Because messages can get distributed so quickly and are multiplied on a very very large scale

so Let's take an example for a spin the topic of refugees is a very very good way to Manipulate the public discourse and last year David Cameron referred to Refugees as a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean

now The word swarm always has a negative ring to it it's never a very pleasant idea to have a swarm coming your way and As John Oliver put it even if it's a swarm of kittens

You still get a tiny bit worried, right? So the tone of the debate then has a direct impact on the public perception of policies That are being proposed. So now will the use of the word swarm Create more sympathy towards refugees or will it actually?

Lead to the fact that while people might be in favor of the creation of more barriers in order to stop this one and And Well, I think the answer is pretty pretty clear when you look at the rise of all the right-wing and anti-immigrant movements across Europe

Another nice example for a spin is a campaign by the French government last year And here the French government wanted to warn about radicalization So this nice infographic gives you advice on how to spot a terrorist

So apparently the process of radicalization also includes that you don't eat baguette anymore and that you change your clothing style so for me, this is a very fine example of Well pure fear-mongering but from more or less harmful spins

Pushing control a tiny bit further even is the development of counter narratives also called sometimes Propaganda or psi ops and Counter narratives are basically stories that are created to go against certain messages

like for example positive messages about peace tolerance and democracy in order to fight against right-wing extremism and Like spins counter narratives are a very old and effective tradition and Victor ago once pointed out that you can fight the invasion of an army, but

you probably can't fight the invasion of an idea and This invasion of ideas was also the central logic behind a very sophisticated u.s. Program during the Cold War Where the u.s. Aimed at shaping public opinion

not only at home, but across the entire globe and Then after the end of the Cold War The so-called war of ideas was then further developed by secret services all around the globe and What changed was the vocabulary in a paper from last year the rent corporation mentioned that

Well, the words propaganda or political warfare were a tiny bit unhelpful So the political world slowly started to adapt the term

counter narratives and now we are entering a whole new era of propaganda and counter propaganda where new technologies allow the super rapid dissemination of ideas and Western governments are more and more using private companies in order to do this

They are using the Google's and the Facebook's in order to educate the people So let's take for example this European internet forum so this is an initiative where the Commission and hero pool sit down with the big five biggest u.s. Companies Microsoft Google

Twitter ask FM and Well anyway with five big US companies in order to well see how these companies can fight against what they can do in order to fight against terrorism and

One of the goals here is also to challenge the terrorist narrative and This then is very problematic for two reasons. Well firstly because it leads to privatized censorship Companies deal more and more with problems that should actually be

the responsibility of the state and the rule of law is then being replaced with terms and conditions or community standards and Secondly, well, I don't need to explain the importance of narratives here at a media conference so we all know that these are stories that are supposed to stick in people's minds and

With this then the powerful are able to fix the premises of the discourse and to decide what the population can see here and think and We can see this for example also reflected in today's debates about terrorism

We rarely see articles that discuss the responsibilities of Western states for the causes of terrorism in the countries of origin for example Or we don't see articles about Western mistakes in responses to terrorist acts or very rarely

so but new media companies Do not only influence the stories the narratives They also have gained the power to actually control directly who you are and they can engineer the public without even the public's knowledge so Who here is on Facebook?

Okay, so I guess then you're happy to learn that you're part of the new generation of guinea pigs Because in 2012 Facebook carried out in a an experiment and manipulated people's timelines in order to test

while the emotional reactions of their users and in Facebook study they concluded that emotions expressed by friends via online social networks constitute the first experimental evidence for massive scale emotional contagion via social networks and

Yes, they can do all this with your data because you have agreed to Facebook's terms and conditions and This state that Facebook can use your personal information to carry out surveys and well academic research But Facebook actually doesn't stop there in a paper from the University of California from 2012

Analyzed another very ambitious experiment in civic engineering by the social network that took place in 2010 and At the time Facebook wanted to find out if it could get previously

Not interested people to vote in the u.s. Congressional midterm elections So the experiment was super simple Facebook showed the user graphic with a link to look up the next voting place and it also showed You the faces of six friends that had allegedly also already voted

So in 2010 Facebook's experiment created social pressure which then caused more people to vote and Well only two months ago Facebook started to ask itself internally what responsibility it had to stop

Donald Trump and you don't need to like Donald Trump a lot, but I find it certainly very creepy that Yeah that private companies have the power and also an interest in Manipulating our democratic systems, but of course Facebook is not the only company doing this

Yeah, Apple and Google have their own little projects to Google influences for example by tweets like this one here and My question is can tweets like this one actually push Bernie Sanders higher in the search

rankings and can then higher rankings also bring him more support in return and research published by Robert Epstein and Ronald Robinson actually suggests that Google has the potential for large-scale

manipulation of election results And Apple just bought a company called emotions last year, but we don't know what it intends to do with this So emotion develops software to assess emotions based on reading facial expressions and on a website

It says wherever there are cameras There can be video analysis of expressions and an opportunity to learn about the customer's state of mind So online companies increasingly distribute information in a way that serves their own ideological or economical agendas and this method then also becomes super attractive for governments, of course

the EU Commission for example started funding emotion tracking and gave 3.6 million euros to realize and Realize is a London-based startup that tracks people's reactions to webcams and smartphone cameras in order to analyze their emotions

so spins counter narratives and civic engineering are Rather soft method to control the media and to control what you might think and say

But there's also the hype method but we don't have enough time here to speak about this which is Prosecution harassment and threats against journalists But all this then leads to a decline of the open debate And also a decline of the quality of the information that's available to people

so If we're not controlling our life anymore or and our thinking anymore, can we at least still go wherever we want? Thank You Kirsten, so as you might have understood I will present the third element of this Control puzzle, which is the control of our movement

Which might be the least obvious one We all think that we are moving freely But we'll show through example that we are actually controlling our movement, even though we don't necessarily realize it So at first we have their historical habit from government to not only Control the movement of their citizen within their territory, but in particular at their border

This affects the freedom of movement, which is a right that is encompassed in the human right declaration It is one also of the most important freedom we have in the EU and its encompassed in our treaties You might have experienced it a lot of time by having the right not only to go around your country

But also to go visit another country and return freely or also to choose to go leave abroad without any issue or work abroad This is your freedom of movement You acknowledge that you have it and but however government can of course infringe in this and there is different way where they can do this They can infringe on your freedom of movement either by cancelling your passport

By putting you under house arrest Or in the case of refugees by limiting your entry into a country while you're fleeting your own country for political reasons This is an image of the Zatari camp in Jordan Which is the biggest camp of Syrian refugees to date according to recent UN status?

It is said that there is 1.4 million Syrian refugees in Jordan in total Not all of them in that camp but in the country in total and over a million in Lebanon And if we compare with the total number of refugees in the EU the latest data from early

2016 indicate that in the EU there is 1.2 million refugees only 50% of them are actually from Syria despite what the media has been explaining and The rest of the refugees are coming mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq Looking at the status of the refugees currently in the situation in the EU we have all seen the disastrous response

From our governments not only in terms of the number of refugees that we've actually took into our countries But also the condition in which we've welcomed those refugees that were fleeing war zones We've seen all of these images of refugees sleeping on on rail tracks sleeping outside during the winter not having access to

administrative supports in order to fight their I solemn Request not having access to remedy in case their right were being abused and not having access to their basic rights Unfortunately, this does not stop here Because the EU is planning to introduce new measures that will affect their right to privacy

After having all of their basic rights in fridge We've seen a last the last two weeks the EU has introduced a new proposal for border control So this is not a right all from the next Daft Punk song This is actually what the EU wants to do with their border. They want them smarter better and stronger

We don't really know. What does it actually mean? But it's considered in this program, which was initially proposed two years ago and was the aim of speeding the border control For any travelers entering the EU so it was mostly about pure migration policies changing the visa system changing the stamping system and

Also adding this part of new biometric collection of data This was already a first issue for privacy because much more personal data About all travelers coming to you. We're going to be collected But the very important impact for specifically affecting refugees and asylum seekers is one of the main goal of this smart border program is to track what the EU called the

Overstayers people that are staying in the EU territory longer than what the EU wants them to so there is specific tracking done through this procedure in order to identify this person and possibly Find them and send them back to their country

Sorry, if you're a nice asylum seekers who do not have the The access to the administrative document that you need in order to file your demand You might be sent back to your country because you've been identified as an overstayers This is of course only one aspect of the smart border package. It will actually affect literally anybody

Traveling in the EU out of the EU and also within the EU This was not initially planned to cover also the travel Intra EU because it's a clear infringement of the internal freedom of movement but this was added at the demand of the French government following the attacks and This why this proposal is somewhat similar to another that you might have heard of which is the passenger name record directive which

attracts the movement of a very flying from the EU into and possibly within if the member states wants to which was discussed for three years in the EU with a lot of European Parliament given the fundamental right concern for our right to privacy

But with the strong political pressure of the attacks in Paris and recently in Brussels. The proposal was adopted one week after I think the attacks in Brussels and it's not going to be implemented and Together with the smart border package and with the new types of surveillance pushed forward by the EU

This will create a harmful shady biased surveillance system Which affects everybody moving within the EU and will affect even more the vulnerable population, which are the refugees and the asylum seekers which gives us leads us to a situation where Even though you have the feeling that you have this freedom of movement because you're actually as a EU citizen or a EU resident

When you were legally established here, I'm talking about of course this category of citizens already, which is not everybody You have the feeling that you can move freely through the EU that you can take a plane and come back and you have this freedom but actually you're being controlled at it for a single movement you're making between your country and this is

what Gilles Deleuze called the Departing of thinking that you are you have this freedom, but you're being controlled all the time And that's what looks like is our future when we see this proposal put on the table and those mechanisms are helped with Some new types of technology that have potentially very good use but are also being put at the use

For surveillance and altering our privacy you all know of course of the examples of the mobile phone and the wearable devices as clearly Mechanism that can be used for tracking purposes. We've talked about them extensively

We've discussed the use of biometric data the further collection of those data through the border control there is also new types of camera being developed and implemented the fish the camera with facial recognition or the cameras with which measures your temperature the one with the temperature is actually

planning to be displayed in all French train station by the National Railway Company in order to identify every traveler that might be More stressed than usual or speaking with a voice higher than the rest or running through the train station so Because it can represent a risk or it can be a potential terrorist. It can also be somebody who's fearing to miss his train, but

it's 50 50 and Finally one of the most used device at the moment that is absolutely which use is absolutely not regulated by the you or Very few country is this little thing here. You might have seen it in most of your clothes. It's an airfied tag

Which has a very specific use it's in order to track the production and the selling of a piece of a piece of clothes a jean or t-shirt and So the retailer basically put it on it on a store on the production chain

And it has information of where it has been produced where it's going to be shipped in it which store it's going to be Sold and it should be removed at the moment where it sold. It's what a commission recommendation indicates, but You maybe know that a commission recommendation is not actually a very strong instrument It's not fully binding and therefore it's absolutely not enforced

So most of the time you go home with this tag still activated It does seem really big in the tag cut before use but it's just a tag. You don't necessarily look at it It's covered by all the rest of the tags you have in your clothes So you might keep this tag on for a while some of them are not very Harmful and automatically disactivate as you exit the store with it

But a lot of them stay activated and with those tag each time you enter a shop that has an airfied reader People could be able to follow your movements through the city These those can seem harmless. But with that you can really have a pattern of movement like you have with your mobile phone So when we're faced with all these systems of

surveillance and all these new types of surveillance developed and how the control of movement thoughts and your control of your life is being Spread around and being further developed. We asked each other in the preparation of these talks What can be the alternative and what are the solution that all together at a society we can do to stop this control?

Yes, so we've heard a Few minutes ago about many problems many problems in our lives I mean many problems in our thoughts going in our mind many problems enough movement. So However, I don't want you to go home and be like all these three women only talking about the problems that we already knew most

Of them I want to do something I actually the three of us what we want you to do is to while we're speaking here and while we Are just are gonna have a chat afterwards that you think about ways to improve this because we need to Focus on the alternative and not about the control. So

My first recommendation or our first recommendation for you guys is innovation for good So I want to tell you the story of Neil Harbison so before I explain you two examples of So-called cyborgs, right?

So the crease Nancy that controlled his life and also Rob Spence that Replaces I with the camera so Neil Harbison actually could not recognize Colors, so let's see that so while I was he was seeing you guys he could not identify whether you were wearing

jello shirt or Red trousers he would see the same colors. So actually Some very clever guys actually develop a device that was improved several times to the point that so he has behind his back a device that actually Tells him the kinds of colors that he's seen by sounds

So apparently now he even can see the colors better than us and can identify like different shades of of jello So instead of saying jello, he would say like I'm seeing a clear jello or something like that So if you are part of a start-up if your job is to be I don't know whatever in a company if your job is

To be an activist if your job is to be a journalist do something get inspired. I want you to get inspired really Add second one is privacy by design. So as I said before if Such a low actually yesterday put a lot of emphasis on becoming entrepreneurs I think we need not only to become entrepreneurs but in whatever job in whatever part of your life you're developing

Actually that you do something use if you have an idea in your mind of a start-up, for example use privacy as an asset Let's stop trading our privacy for convenience as Chris dances says He says that actually because he doesn't believe in privacy that actually seems all these devices

Are very useful to us that we should stop caring about our privacy because we don't have it anymore. Do you agree? I hope you said no, so just Use the privacy by design Embedded and make sure you spread the word and we make this world a better place because in the end it's our world So instead of just complaining I think it's very good to find solutions

so another solution that we thought of is that you confuse the Algorithms that you fight against the profiling of these companies that are trying to put on you without you even Being under control because you probably have heard this narrative saying that oh who read who reads here the times Conditions, I want to see the hands

Okay, two, okay Okay, let's say that these three people that have read the terms of conditions or one of these applications of services actually read them Right. So what do you do? I mean what you see a trade just things that basically they can do whatever They want with your data with the use of that application. So what do you do?

Not much whether you'd accept it and or whether you don't use the application or the service, right? So let's just use our ability to be creative and then for example, if you usually buy I don't know your food online. Just buy random stuff or just change your name and

Make it harder for the algorithms to actually show the results. They want you to see The final one that I want you to Remind because I know that many of you know already is to use the anonymity and encryption And so use the technology that is out there to actually protect your life

So you already probably know Taurus signal VPNs internet cubes and so many more and so many more Services and applications that you I'm sure are going to develop to make our lives easier, right? Yes Well spins counter narratives and fight against the fact that various actors try to

Control the media in order to control what we think and what we say One super obvious thing is to actually check the facts Because really do it when you read and use When you read an article and use somewhere just try to find other sources in order to verify if it's all correct

Because sometimes it's just copy and paste from governmental press releases or from European Commission press releases So it's always good to to do this and Another thing that Marcus Beckett I already said here yesterday on stage one

And I think we should change the slogan from Marcus Beckett. I changed my life to Marcus Beckett. I stole my slides So one solution is access to information requests Make access to document requests through your governments because the right to obtain

Documents allows us to expose actually the inner workings of governments it helps to Yes, keep the state accountable and to have evidence-based discussions So there's various portals for the EU you can use for example, ask the EU

Or in Germany, it's fact in start Another thing that we need is legal protection of whistleblowers because unfortunately in Europe There's still no comprehensive legal protection at the moment whistleblowers risk the careers reputations family everything so we need

EU white legal protection and unfortunately Policy at the moment at the EU level goes exactly into the wrong direction with the adoption of the trade secret service directive And Then well, we also need more media outlets to actually publish the leaks in order to just quote them

Part in controlling the movement. I just have three short Ideas of recommendation, but we'd like to hear from from you guys on more idea so one of the thing which is a little bit in the same direct goes in the same direction as what my own proposed on

data obfuscation to Play with the algorithm here. It's to play with the camera by just using disguise if there is so much facial recognition the slide which was actually shown before it's from a Very great talk that was given at CCC Which shows like how actually by your movement or the way you present yourself in front of the camera you can

Actually false the recognition of the camera. This is of course not a long-term solution only your short-term solution There should be more effort in making sure that the installation of cameras does not become a normal thing for us to do And we don't start seeing cameras everywhere, but this is a really short-term solution

Another point is to become the next max Rams He's shown us that with a lot of time and a lot of energy you can take down safe harbor There is a lot of harmful legislation that he's being adopted PNR being the one of them and we need more people like max To go to court and challenge those

legislation and finally remove all the trackers so When you purchase your phone and when you purchase most of the wearables, they have the tracking options on by default Look at them online and learn how to remove them. Most of them not all of them will be possible again

This is really a short-term solution but you can reduce your fingerprint online by removing all the trackers and we have Final one Which is maybe a more general one which apply to the whole country Whole control paradigm which don't be afraid of being different of being yourself the right to privacy is the right to be you

To be different to not be like the government wants you to be to not be the normal according the government But the normal according to you don't be afraid to be different because you should start changing yourself then or start losing Okay, so besides being yourself and besides being different whatever that means to you you can also support local organizations

So, I don't know if you knew European digital rights Edry and our super powerful member access now, but you do now know about them So I hope you can support us and your local organizations It's very important that you actually do something even just contact us contact any other organization that you know

We need help so to give you an idea in Brussels We're just three people dealing with policy all of these proposals that we've seen before three people plus Estelle and her team and also another organization. That's it So I hope you actually get inspired again And now we would like to hear your thoughts your doubts your comments your questions

And you can always follow us that on Twitter also at Edry and access now visit our websites and thank you very much

Okay Thank you very much for your talk. I really enjoyed it and I have one question

That might be too specific. So I'm already sorry if it's not fair but my question goes in the direction of a lot of the security measures you've Mentioned and you've criticized and rightly so I share your concerns a lot of these measures are Reactions to certain developments to an influx of refugees or to security concerns because of terrorism and

The solutions you offered usually went into the direction of public air of private Security and private safety and privacy of your data, which is all very important but I think there is a need in a lot of countries in Europe and and in

The West for there is a public need for safety whether it's justified or not is another question But people want to feel safe. People want to feel protected from terrorism people Unsure and I

Was just thinking that I agree with a lot of your criticism But you have to offer some sort of alternative When it comes to these issues with the with the privacy and the personal data you offer a lot of alternatives There's a lot out there, but when it comes to the more sort of societal issues of safety and

Just general welfare I feel like This this kind of crowd here sometimes lacks the answer to those kind of issues And I don't think it's enough to just say you're safe You're sick. Your concerns are not valid like they're overblown some of them surely are but

They I think there still needs to be done more to offer in an alternative that also offers some sort of I Don't know safety measures For the people. Thank you That's actually a very important point in a lot of the discussion that we had during

The passenger name record in particular discussion and during the discussion on the directive on combating terrorism What you say is actually very important there is a reaction from government after tragic attacks of Passing legislation very fast to give the people the feeling of being safe

And what we've been combating is the rush in passing drastic surveillance measure Giving people this feeling that something he's being done for the safety, but actually not changing the security issues There was the case already after if you remember the London and Madrig attacks Six months after the data retention directive was adopted, which has now been overturned by the court for infringing fundamental rights

Two weeks after the Brussels attack the PNR directive was adopted exact same concerns and it will follow the same path in the court The issue we had with the PNR directive is that after the Brussels and especially after the Paris attacked We've asked the French government to conduct an inquiry on the failure of

the intelligence Because France as you know has expanded so much their surveillance that people were not understanding if you have so much data How come didn't you not stop those attacks the French government and the French opposition to the government refused to do such inquiry Because we're so close to the political election that either of the result would have shown that during one or the other government some

Harmful legislation was adopted in order to make the word of intelligence and the police much more difficult A lot of actually intelligence officer were saying that too much data is not helpful to their work. It's using this data

Appropriately and after the Brussels and the Paris attack a lot of the time we've heard over and over that The police knew the suspect in either of the region, but just we're not communicating between each other So they had the data They were not making the usage of this data as need be and they also had too much data because did you just need the data About the suspect the one they had and pass this information to the relevant authority, which did not happen

We asked them whether they would consider putting something like that in the PNR directive And they just said no the member said we'll never agree to that the result is you have surveillance measures surveilling absolutely everything on basis of no suspicion and Even if at some point this directive might be useful and you can find one terrorist

The member state do not have the obligation to share this information with the other countries So let's put an example with the PNR directive. Germany finds out that somebody is planning to do an attack in France They do not have the obligation to inform France about that People might think you're safer with the PNR directive, but maybe in practice this will not happen So it's true that we need to propose alternative. But at the same time when you take decision in such

Difficult situation you just pass the first legislation you have an unstable you're not looking at exactly what's in it and you end up adopting legislation that harming all of the population and To be honest we had a lot of lawmakers telling us how bad they felt about adopting the PNR directive and that they were wishing that we

Will take it to court to fight it That's not the way we should do policy making hoping that there is someone courageous activists I will take it to court to challenge it because you were not able to take the political courage of Fighting for the right solution, even if it takes a few more months to actually make the situation different and Also, if I just might add in order to increase the general security all around the globe as I said before maybe we

Have to finally also look at Western responsibilities in the countries of origin. What are we doing out there? You know, what are our involvements in the countries where terrorism?

Surfaces Yeah, and also just to add as well, I think your question is right At the point that we need to do discuss. I think one of the alternatives to encourage people to think by themselves I think whether the measures proposed are being really efficient necessary and proportionate and The challenge as the UN High Commissioner of for human rights. He said that the challenge for

2016 is to actually Have that ensure that countries have human rights in their agenda as well trying to find again fight against terrorism Which is very key. It seems that human rights are just this beautiful concept

But did you know or did you remember that actually that your right to life is also human rights Did you know that your right to privacy is just not something that we'd like to Campaign for just because we think we need our privacy. It's a human right our freedom of expression is a human rights So there's proof actually for example the UN plan of action against violent extremism

It says that there's evidence showing that countries that use more repressive Policies actually encouraged violence the missing more and not the opposite We can do you know that for example? After the Paris attacks what the French government decided to do to ask for the derogation of the European Convention of Human Rights

Now the UK does not only want to leave the European Union But also to have a derogation of the European Convention of Human Rights because they say that they know how to predict it Already meaning that all of the other countries in the world. I don't know how to predict human rights Is it the the world we want to just have security?

And not human rights. I will I want both I and I hope that you do too and I think critical thinking is it's very very important and then just ensure that your politicians hear you and That you support Really common sense because for example that I mentioned before that are active on combatant terrorism that is currently being drafted

So the proposal to give you an idea the proposal was made in December. It was drafted in two weeks According to the Commission guidelines they need to provide an impact assessment to check whether the measures are Efficient and unnecessary and proportionate and comply with human rights standards. They said that they didn't need to do it

So it seems that terrorism is a very complex issue, but does not deserve the time to think about it But then that's where we fail now the council So we're all of the member states of the European Union So the 28 countries of the EU are already took the position and the European Parliament right now actually at this moment They're having a meeting

To discuss how they're gonna really restrict our rights and in the proposal of the European Commission They say that the his directive respects a human rights is like, uh-huh, maybe not So that's why we're there and I hope you also engaged and develop critical thinking us as you just did Okay with with extensive answers as these we have time for one more question

And it is a very quick one Because as I perceived your work, it was always about calmly explaining where privacy does not Oppose safety and where

Measures that are sold as safety measures actually don't do not increase safety, but at the same time creep on on human rights, so my question now is Are you seen as opposing safety? Concerns sometimes is that also one of the things you have to deal with

Besides because I imagine always you try to reach people and to get your message across and Does this ever happen that you are seen as opposing? The safety of the people that's all it's very it's a yes or no question That was actually interesting because for this debate

We knew this might happen and that's why also we were discussing alternative and other solution rather than the one Proposed on the table to not change the discourse like that. We had in our experience a lot of Easy attacks from some politician that were not in favor of the arguments

We were putting on the table during the net neutrality debate We were we've been called of being in favor of child pornography of being Taliban's and in such a difficult issue like terrorism We thought that this Possibility might come at some point and completely derate the debate from the issue or discussing I

Have to say that during the PNR debate this never came up Luckily at the same time we ran a really large campaign with more than a thousand hundred Citizens emailing the Parliament contacting the Parliament calling the Parliament asking them to not vote for the PNR

But the political pressure was so high in the other side That the proponent of the measure knew that this will go through really fast so they didn't engage with us at all we didn't have any meetings possible with the with the reporters and It was just no engagement at all. So the we were not necessarily attacked in this proposal because

From the very beginning. It was really hard to oppose it. There were no need for For for them to engage because Actually very interestingly the most of the media 20 minute after the attacked in Brussels most of the French media to be honest

We're blaming the EU for the attack happening for not having adopted the PNR directive already So that completely started and that was a really strong media spin against the European Parliament for not taking their responsibility allegedly and That completely stopped any possibilities of engaging in

Positive debate But not all of the NGOs that are fighting for privacy Are that lucky our member no observer member la quarter to the net in France last year right after the? Charlie Abdul attacks Launched campaigns in order to well bring back the debate on an evidence-based level in France

And they got attacked super heavily by the opposition world by the other side Saying that they were actually Well helping terrorism and so on so it can happen Also one thing well the conservatives also use the Paris attacks

At the EU level in order to say, okay now if well if we don't Push through the security measures that were on the table Very quickly then all those who oppose this are actually helping to well

To well to have more bloodshed. It was very populous. It was very ugly So it can happen For PNR it wasn't true, but yeah because there was just no major major position against PNR But they did it again after the Brussels attacks Saying that the left would actually I mean the terrorists would actually vote for the left, which is ridiculous and very I would say very

damaging and yeah for even for themselves Thanks for your speech I think the whole thing controls more

between freedom freedom of speech and all the privacy Being free being yourself and the other thing is control With a politic of fear you can't have both you can't have security and freedom

For a secure society and for the individual at the same time I find it more Distraction than really a danger to say it like this that terrorists are a threat to societies

This issue is more used very often as you can see in Spain and France and everywhere else to push agendas to control people to control media to restrict human rights and We should all Ask ourself where it comes from and who's

Taken advantage of it And I find it very strange that for example In France is still Not really the normal, right? I don't know the English word for it It's not war right right now, but it's very restricted. You can't do any demonstration

And In the media now nobody tells anything about for example a really big movement of New tibu, I don't know if this right pronounced And everything like that like in Spain. You can't do it any demonstration without being risking

hundreds of thousands of euro to pay as a fine nobody is talking about that and This is a control. I really against it the security

Against terrorism the war of terrorism, which is not working anywhere as you can see and we all know I think we should focus on on the other side on the politician on The agendas of the politicians and the big global contour

Yeah So not focusing on the private side, but more focusing what we are risking To lose all those societies we have built up Yeah, that's that's a fair point actually in some of the meetings we had with politicians I've been told that

Yeah, Marianne, you need to give me concrete benefits for the population because everybody's watching me. How can I tell The voters that actually I would not be in favor of these measures that the other Parties are appraising us fighting terrorism. What do I say?

What's the benefit for the population if I say no, and I think that's that's very key But I don't think it's a question of either or I think it's both Because if we win on one side and we lose on the other side We're not going to change anything if the politicians and they imagine that the politicians are convinced that Repressive measures are not the solution, but the population it starts

being very Dramatic and criticizing the government this will change the public. I mean the their their opinion So it's a question of both for my perspective