Planes and Ships and Saving Lives
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00:00
Dependent and independent variablesArithmetic meanOperator (mathematics)AuthorizationPrisoner's dilemmaTotal S.A.Sound effectTelecommunicationMusical ensemblePresentation of a groupConnectivity (graph theory)Coordinate systemComputer hardwareRow (database)Civil engineeringPlanningMortality rateSoftwareLecture/Conference
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Line (geometry)Musical ensembleLattice (order)PlanningSound effectNeuroinformatikComputer hardwareEmailMultiplication signMeeting/Interview
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Computer hardwareBitMultiplication signOperator (mathematics)MultilaterationPoint (geometry)Water vaporMeeting/Interview
04:42
MetreSurjective functionComputer animationMeeting/Interview
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View (database)State of matterExterior algebra
06:35
Moment (mathematics)Arithmetic meanRight anglePlanningCivil engineering
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Coordinate systemCivil engineeringVideo gameMultiplication signHypermediaBitMeeting/Interview
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Civil engineeringMathematicsGeometryWater vaporParameter (computer programming)Perspective (visual)Meeting/InterviewDiagram
09:36
Drop (liquid)Position operatorComputer hardwareVideoconferencingMeeting/Interview
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TrigonometryProcess (computing)Line (geometry)HypermediaVideo gameSound effectMoment (mathematics)Civil engineeringHuman migrationDivisorParameter (computer programming)State of matterMeeting/Interview
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Sound effectNumberAreaMortality rateFlagOperator (mathematics)Computer animationXML
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Civil engineeringRow (database)NP-hardMultiplication signOperator (mathematics)MereologyPlanningCentralizer and normalizerComputer animationMeeting/Interview
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Operator (mathematics)Sinc functionTelecommunicationCoordinate systemGroup actionStress (mechanics)SoftwareComputer hardwareChaos (cosmogony)
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Operator (mathematics)Computer hardwareSoftwareMereologyConnectivity (graph theory)System callVideo gamePhysical system
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Queue (abstract data type)Physical systemImmersion (album)Civil engineeringComputer animation
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CASE <Informatik>Personal digital assistantPosition operatorCoordinate systemCivil engineeringMultiplication signTouchscreenRight anglePower (physics)Computer animation
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CASE <Informatik>Personal digital assistantPoint (geometry)Task (computing)Computer virusSystem administratorSoftwareProjective planeAddressing modeMereologyComputer animationLecture/Conference
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Projective planeCovering spaceOrientation (vector space)CollisionPosition operatorTelecommunicationRoutingOcean currentPower (physics)TransmissionskoeffizientInformation systemsCompass (drafting)Stability theorySoftwareInternet service providerElectric generatorMathematicsWaveInformationBuffer solutionWhiteboard
20:36
Bridging (networking)MultiplicationSoftwareOffice suiteInternettelefoniePosition operatorWaveData storage deviceNeuroinformatikCrash (computing)LaptopHypermediaLecture/Conference
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NeuroinformatikConnected spaceInternetworkingPower (physics)Data storage deviceRow (database)SpacetimeWhiteboardNumberMeeting/Interview
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Materialization (paranormal)Multiplication signWordVideoconferencingCivil engineeringConnectivity (graph theory)Axiom of choiceIdentity managementMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Uniform resource locatorVideoconferencingCoprocessorField (computer science)Multiplication signGoodness of fitLaptopRemote procedure callPersonal digital assistantNegative numberDigital photographyPlastikkarteLimit (category theory)Data structureKey (cryptography)BefehlsprozessorOpen setProcess (computing)Meeting/Interview
26:05
RadarBridging (networking)VideoconferencingPosition operatorProjective planeHypermediaBootingData acquisitionLink (knot theory)Meeting/Interview
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Multiplication signLink (knot theory)Military baseSatelliteFitness functionSystem callWhiteboardPhysical systemOperating systemRadon transformModemLecture/Conference
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Band matrixLink (knot theory)Different (Kate Ryan album)Wind tunnelState of matterCommunications protocolUniform resource locatorOverhead (computing)Mobile appRadon transformMeeting/Interview
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Cartesian coordinate systemSelf-organizationTelecommunicationAreaInternet service providerMoment (mathematics)Coordinate systemTime zoneLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Personal digital assistantLine (geometry)Right angleCoordinate systemInformationComputer animation
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Coordinate systemSoftwareMultiplication signArc (geometry)Computer architectureWater vaporCartesian coordinate systemSelf-organizationAuditory maskingIncidence algebraAuthorizationComputer forensicsElectronic visual display
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Personal digital assistantMoment (mathematics)Traffic reportingSet (mathematics)Computer animation
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Lipschitz-StetigkeitAreaDatabaseCartesian coordinate systemAuthorizationInformationTraffic reportingIncidence algebraLecture/ConferenceMeeting/InterviewComputer animation
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Software testingMedizinische InformatikMeeting/Interview
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TelecommunicationChaos (cosmogony)TouchscreenSinc functionMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Right anglePosition operatorMoment (mathematics)PlanningState of matterOcean currentMeeting/Interview
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Moment (mathematics)Office suiteDisk read-and-write headSelf-organizationQuicksortGroup actionMultiplication signConnected spaceArmAuthorizationFlow separationMeeting/InterviewComputer animation
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Sign (mathematics)Multiplication signCondition numberRight angleSelf-organizationLimit (category theory)Moment (mathematics)InformationWhiteboardPhysical lawMeeting/Interview
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MathematicsMusical ensembleSelf-organizationOpen setMultiplication signArmFlagWhiteboardPressureMeeting/Interview
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Maxima and minimaSineLevel (video gaming)Twitter1 (number)BitLine (geometry)Interior (topology)PressureState of matterLecture/Conference
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Lattice (order)Dressing (medical)WhiteboardTunisMeeting/Interview
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Multiplication signBitMathematical singularityData conversionMusical ensembleNumberMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
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Shooting methodNumberOpen setSet (mathematics)FlagMultiplication signWater vaporPhysical lawTime zoneThomas BayesMereologyMusical ensembleLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Semiconductor memoryCartesian closed categoryLocal area networkWhiteboardLink (knot theory)VideoconferencingMusical ensembleLecture/ConferenceMeeting/InterviewDiagram
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:19
Our next lecture has certain risks. It has more risks actually.
00:26
It's called planes and chips and saving lives. It's how software and software can actually play a key role in saving lives at sea. And why Frontex doesn't like it.
00:40
It's done by Trollofix, Nick and Ruben. And what is following is actually a talk that's once again about a very serious moral and ethical dilemma. Since the death rate at the European sea border reached a historical record this year,
01:04
in September one out of five people actually who left Libya on a fine wanky boat drowned in September. So the main reason for the increasing of this death rate is actually the crackdown on sea rescue operations by European authorities.
01:27
Since no rescue coordination center clearly takes responsibility currently, then the technical means of communication of course do play a key role in the efforts to coordinate rescues.
01:42
And in the future, and that's what my friends here are going to explain to you, is that a civil society run Martim Rescue Coordination Center could help to reduce the death of sea significantly. This talk focuses then on the soft and hardware components that are necessary to challenge European deadly border policy.
02:10
So give them a warm applause, they will present us some potential solutions to fulfill this ambition. Thank you all.
02:29
Thanks a lot for joining. Great to have you all here because we need you all to solve this problem on the Mediterranean Sea we are going to talk about. My name is Ruben, that is Nick, and this is Trollofix.
02:43
We are going to talk about planes and ships and saving lives, and especially how this comes together with people that are competent in IT technology, that are competent in hardware technology, and why this is so much needed currently on the Mediterranean Sea.
03:02
Me personally, I'm not a nerd at all, so I have basically no idea about computers. I need my house nerds like Nick to help me encrypting my computer and my emails, which is also pretty important in this time for sea rescue, and I will tell you why shortly. So I'm basically giving you a short introduction into the situation on the Mediterranean Sea,
03:25
and afterwards those people who are much more competent in IT technology and hardware will talk about the solutions we need at sea for saving lives. So basically, what is the problem? People are in distress at sea.
03:42
This is a picture taken from our surveillance aircraft Moonbird. There's a rubber boat which is sinking and taking water. This is a situation we might currently have north of Al Khums, which is a Libyan town at the so-called European border.
04:01
I mean, it's the Mediterranean Sea, which is basically the border of the European Union. People start in Libya, try to cross the Mediterranean Sea. Why a boat? Because there's no safe and legal alternatives, and so they are ending up in such kind of situations. If the talk is a bit chaotic at some point, it might have to do with the fact that we are currently in operation with our ship,
04:26
and so there was not much time to prepare because still people are stranded on our boat, but I will talk about that a bit later. So we have this situation with people in distress. So what would you normally expect that's going to happen?
04:41
Well, if you are white, and if you have a European passport, and you get in distress some 100 meters out of Jagdport in Germany, that's going to happen. However, if you are not holding a European passport,
05:00
and if you are trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea and you get in distress, maybe that's going to happen. Because basically the reaction of the European Union onto distress cases at sea looks like this. There's simply nothing.
05:20
So what we were thinking about some years ago, when the death toll on the Mediterranean Sea was on the rise, what can we do? If people try to cross the Mediterranean Sea and risk their lives in totally un-sea-worthy old fishing cutters, so we had the idea that there was a solution to this,
05:42
and so we also bought an old and un-sea-worthy fishing cutter, which we then turned into the Sea Watch 1, which was the first rescue ship coming from Germany to the Mediterranean Sea. However, we called it Sea Watch for a reason.
06:01
We didn't call it Sea Rescue, for example, because in our view, it's not the obligation of the civil society to solve the problems European states have caused by closing down their border and by denying any legal alternative for people escaping war, terror or other things,
06:20
for example in Libya. So we thought what we still need to do is we need to go there, we need to look into the situation and we need to make sure that no one drowns. So that's basically what we did, and we sent down the ship to the Mediterranean Sea, and pretty fast, we found a lot of people in distress there,
06:43
and we had to deal with it. So in the first moment, we were pretty overwhelmed. But then what happened, and that was really amazing, was that the civil society actually acted. So a lot of new NGOs popped up and sent ships to the Mediterranean Sea,
07:03
and that was something I was honestly impressed by. Because if we think about the European Union, with all the means they have with ships, with planes, with a lot of money, whatever, we would have never estimated that it would be some Berlin hipsters in their mid-20s to send the most effective asset to defend the human rights on the Mediterranean Sea
07:23
and to rescue lives. But it was not only the Uinta, it was also, for example, Lifeline, Doctors Without Borders, there were people from sea ice sending ships. So in the end, we had a whole civil rescue fleet that was carrying out rescues on the Mediterranean Sea,
07:42
and that worked pretty well. So the civil rescue fleet was able to save thousands and thousands of lives on the Mediterranean Sea, and that worked pretty well also, because the coordination with the Rescue Coordination Center in Rome worked pretty fine, because during that time,
08:02
also on the European side, at least some people thought, well, if people get in distress at sea, we should probably rescue them. That's also a normal thing. So could you imagine someone could have something against rescuing lives at sea? Well, probably you know the answer already. There is that guy.
08:21
I mean, that guy was pretty prominent in the media this year by blocking civil rescue ships, but it also started a bit earlier. That guy, you might also know him, was the first one, starting with the huge criminalization campaign
08:41
against the civil sea rescue. So back in 2016, end of 2016, early 2017, there was a lot of rumors spreading about the NGOs on the Mediterranean Sea. What are they doing? Are they maybe colluding with the smugglers?
09:01
And then there were some accusations that are pretty stupid. For example, there was the accusation that was widely spread that we would give light signals to the Libyan shore. I mean, we have nerds here, so probably you are pretty good in mathematics and in geometry. So what do you think about the argument that there is
09:22
the possibility of giving light signals to the Libyan shore if you're far out of territorial waters of Libya? So basically already from a geometry perspective, it's not possible to give that kind of light signals. Still, this accusation was widely spread. And of course, that helped to let our donations drop
09:42
and make our work much easier. Another accusation I want to shortly talk about is the accusation that we would not destroy the boats we find, because there was the accusations, if we find a rubber boat in distress, we have to destroy it, and then it cannot be used again by smugglers,
10:01
so there was the accusations we would not destroy them. I have to prove that we do so. So that's how it looks like if we destroy boats. So basically, we have a lot of these accusations, and what do you think how this contributes to the fact
10:20
that we need a lot of nerds to help us in carrying out our mission? Why can nerds make our mission much safer? Well, because if we are able to document what we are doing at sea, if we are able to document the positions we are on, if we can have a video of whatever happens at sea,
10:44
then we can prove afterwards that these accusations are false. And that's why it's pretty important to have hardware technology on board our vessel, so that's one thing. However, the story continued, so these kind of accusations were very effective, and so we ended up in a situation
11:02
where the Uinta was the first ship to be confiscated. It's still confiscated. It was confiscated already in 2017. It's in Japanese now, and it cannot do its job anymore. And we thought, OK, we still continue, but then this year, a lot of other ships were confiscated.
11:21
We have the case of the lifeline that was very prominently in the media. The lifeline is still confiscated in Malta. So it became much more difficult for the civil NGOs, and there was a moment where no civil rescue ship at all was left in the Mediterranean Sea. And, of course, this has effects,
11:42
so what happened basically was the people were still coming, because, I mean, there was this argument of a push factor, sorry, a pull factor, so there was the argument by the European states that only because there is civil sea rescue, the people are coming over the Mediterranean Sea,
12:01
and then they get rescued by the NGOs, and then they get brought to Europe. However, when there was no NGOs anymore, still people were coming, but there was just no one anymore to rescue them. So the effect of this effect, we have seen in a pretty trastical way
12:21
in the September of this year, because before we had this number. Any idea what this number means? So this number is basically the death rate we had shortly before the NGOs were pulled out of the area.
12:41
So it was one in 44. So if one in 44 who tries to cross the Mediterranean Sea via the central med, would drown. When we had the last rescue ship, the Aquarius, stopping the operations because their flag was taken away, in September, the number raised to one in five.
13:05
So in September, when there was no civil rescue ship at all, we had one in five drowning who tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea. And to better imagine what it means if one in five drowns, you can just count in the rows here, and you will recognize that it's a pretty horrible situation.
13:24
And for this reason, of course, we tried to continue sea rescue. These pictures are taken last week, because even though sometimes it's hard times at sea, we managed to get our ships, at least some of our ships, back into operation.
13:42
And also, we got back into operation our planes, which we use for air surveillance. This picture is taken a year ago, but the aircraft just took off half an hour ago from Lampedusa to search the eastern part of the central Mediterranean Sea. And that led to a situation where we are able to act again.
14:04
So on Christmas, or the weekend before Christmas, the first rescue since months carried out by a civilian rescue operations took place. Those people are, by the way, still on the sea watch. But actually, we are able to operate.
14:25
However, and that's also why we had a lot of stress the last days, coordination is pretty difficult. We now have a lot of groups involved in search and rescue. We have a difficult situation at sea, so it's sometimes not easy to understand what is going on,
14:44
so communication is pretty important. So what can we do to not let the situation end up into chaos, like we can see on this picture? We need you, because there, hardware and software can play a key role
15:01
to make our operations much more efficient. So we'll start with the hardware. I mean, if you have a ship at sea, hundreds of kilometers away from the shore, then there is no way to actually reach this ship by simple mobile phone.
15:20
So satellite communication is the first and very important part of hardware technology we have to use to make our operations much more efficient. And how this works, we will later see in a live call. If it works out, actually. And on the other hand, another pretty important part of the hardware components
15:42
is that we need, actually, cameras and we need voice recording systems to be able to prove what is going on at sea. So that's why we need you guys, because that's something I can't do. Then there's another thing.
16:01
This is an IMARSAT-C technology. This is a basic satellite communication system to communicate with ships at sea. It's obligatory on all ships. And this is also a way to reach other ships than our own vessels, because it's not only civil rescue ships on the Mediterranean Sea,
16:22
it's also merchant vessels or other ships that are just around. We can contact through that. And why this is important and why we need you to help us solve some problems with this old Microsoft DOS technology that is combined with that,
16:42
that's also something Nick is going to talk about. And last but not least, what we also want to establish, and that's pretty important, is a civil rescue coordination center. Because in former times, when everything was running kind of okay,
17:00
the rescue coordination center in Rome, if they are aware of a case of distress, they would send a position to the civil rescue ship, and they would coordinate everything. So they would have their charts, they would have all their screens, and they would just deal with it, and they would just only tell the civil rescue ships where to go and what to do. Since Savini is in power, this just doesn't happen,
17:23
and so we have to do it ourselves. That's why we think it's pretty important to have such a chart where we can plot all the distress cases, where we can coordinate it ourselves. This is for two reasons. One is to save human lives,
17:40
and one is also to monitor the human rights situation out at sea. So that's what Nick is going to tell you about what we need from the technical side. This comes into place again because this is very old technology, and we need to combine it with new technology that looks like this so we can use it together.
18:03
That's basically the task we're going to talk about. At this point, I would like to hand over to get some more details about the technical solutions. Hello. I want to give you a short introduction how it's like to be the ship's system administrator.
18:22
I spent two weeks in September on the lifeline, and basically we refurbished the whole ship's network. So a short introduction. Again, the ship was built in 1968 as Clupier and was built by the 40 Department of Agriculture and Fisheries of Scotland.
18:40
In 2015, it was bought by Seawatch, and then in 2017, it was bought by Mission Lifeline and is since operated by Lifeline. Well, as you can imagine, in the last 50 years, a lot of mechanics, engineers, and technicians botched around the ship and repaired stuff and upgraded it, so in some parts, this feels like maintaining a legacy software project.
19:04
The power supply, there are two generators on the ship, so in general, the stability and availability of the power is not as reliable as on land, so therefore all devices which are essential for navigation and communication are battery buffered.
19:22
Now I want to shortly cover devices, sensors, and data providers. We have a compass you will find on board. So for navigation, we have a gyro compass, which is basically a compass which gives the orientation of the ship in the waves, because this always changes, of course. Then we have GPS receivers, so this is the global positioning system,
19:44
so we always need to find our current position, and we also have AIS transmitters and receivers. AIS is the automatic information system, so this is basically a transmitter which sends out the ship's name,
20:03
the current position, and the course, and this is also for collision avoidance. Furthermore, we have weather data which is fetched online, and for communication, we have standard radios and iridium, a VZ uplink, and LTE, but I will cover that later.
20:21
Many of these devices need to be interconnected, so the autopilot, for example, needs access to the compass data, of course, and to the gyro, and to the GPS, and the AIS. Some of the radios need AIS, so basically we have lots of devices on board, and a huge network, and everything is connected with various NMEA 0183 buses,
20:42
which is essentially RS-422, or NMEA 2000, which is essentially a canvas, so we have multiple of these in the ship to interconnect all the devices we find on the bridge. So, furthermore, there's also an office on the ship, so there are printers, VoIP phones, Wi-Fi network, Ethernet network,
21:04
and we have lots of laptops with Linux. Furthermore, there are IP cameras, as Rum already told, an audio recording setup, and network storage, because we might later need to prove what we did, so we need to record all our positions in all the cameras,
21:22
what the cameras recorded from the deck and around the ship. Yeah, so all of the computers on the lifeline are now provisioned with Ansible, which is a fast replacement in emergency situations, e.g. for example, if the ship's bridge computer with the navigation
21:41
crashes or just falls down due to heavy waves, so we can grab the media team's computer and make it a bridge computer within minutes. So furthermore, Ansible has the great advantage that we sort of have a documentation, and for replacement crews, which happens every two weeks, it's comprehensible how the computers are set up.
22:02
Also, documentation is essential. If you build something without documenting it, it's virtually non-existent. Especially on a ship, this can be very dangerous. For example, in a life-threatening situation, if you need a handbook of a broken device and you have no power and no internet connection,
22:20
this can be really dangerous. So you need to document everything. Here we see the storage compartment for the documentation, which is the whole row of folders up there, and so everything is ordered by letter and number and so on, so it's easy to access everything because everything is on board. Also, a label printer is very helpful
22:41
if you have a bunch of cables, as you saw in the previous picture. It's rather annoying to find out which cable belongs to which. And as there is no strength or storage compartment, but rather many small spaces under seat benches and beds and cupboards, you need to be very organized to put everything in its spot at all times, or you will spend most of your time
23:01
searching for your tools and materials, which is rather annoying to go up and down the small steps on the ship all day long. And also, it's rather inconvenient if you wake up the ship's engineer because you need to access the compartment below his bed just to find out that the tool you are looking for was not there anymore because you put it somewhere else.
23:23
So to give you an imagination, I'll show you a short video, hopefully. Okay. Yeah.
24:23
So, yeah, well, I started also taking videos for documentation to show the locations of these compartments because it's not really convenient to take pictures or write it down because then I can give the replacement crews a virtual tour of the ship without being on the ship myself and also the others don't need to be on the ship
24:41
and I can show them around and then they can immediately ask questions. So I took another video.
25:04
Then I took the 3-minute walk and then I took the STBE standby TX filter and then I found the antenna open at 6.30. The key structure is here. This is the remote processing unit.
25:22
The M1 CPU with a FOWE cable and of course the main connector. Here the stick cable is here. This is also what you need to do. I'm going to show you a bunch of things and then I'll show you. The main connector is here.
25:41
The hard connector is also here. These are the main connectors. This is where the cable is located. Here, for example, all of these are open. These are open. The main connector is here. The port is here.
26:01
The laptop is here.
26:29
Lastly, I want to quickly introduce a project Daniel made. We've had the problem that the ship has multiple uplinks
26:40
as already explained and we always wanted to select the currently best uplink. There are commercial solutions for this and there's a talk about why we didn't use it. It's called Das Boot 4.0 by Stefan Gehling and it was held at the MRM CDs this year and it's available via media CCCDE. Feel free to have a look at it.
27:01
We have three uplinks. The first one is LTE, the thing every one of you has in his phone or her phone. It's very fast but it has limited traffic and is only available in ports or close to the islands. Then we have VSAT, which is satellite based. It has a flat rate. It's slower than LTE and is available on sea most of the times
27:20
but it needs a dish and this dish always needs to be aligned with the satellite. So sometimes there are obstacles in the way. For example, the ship's pole and then we have no fix and also in heavy sea sometimes we lose a link and then we have Iridium, which is also satellite based but doesn't need a dish but just a regular antenna. This works mostly all the time
27:42
but is super expensive like for a phone call, three euros per minute and 16 euros per megabyte. So we use this. No. Then we build a setup, which basically is an APU board with an LTE modem, which is shown here
28:01
and it runs OpenWrt, an embedded Linux system for, a Linux operating system for embedded devices and we have two VPN endpoints in two different locations on land running OpenWrt as well and we set up wire guard tunnels between all devices and then the uplink to be used is determined with OLSR,
28:25
which is a link state routing protocol and maybe known to you from FIFO because they also used to use it. So basically if VZ or LTE are available, always the best link will be used and provided
28:41
and if LTE and VZ are gone it will automatically drop to Iridium but due to limited bandwidth and the overhead, we don't use the wire guard tunnels then anymore but actually the setup worked very well for the last months and the uplink availability also compared to the previous installed switch also increased.
29:08
Yeah. Hi, I'm Nick. Yeah, as I said, I'm working with SeaWatch. We already had a talk like two years ago about developing the search and rescue application, which was basically like an application
29:22
to provide sea to sea communication organization. That means we basically had the problem that at this time we're like a lot of NGOs working in this area and yeah, we basically wrote like a geographical information system to coordinate between all those ships and to basically track our ships.
29:41
What we're like, yeah, the problem we're having at this moment is that we have still some assets in the rescue zone but we don't have like a MRCC that means like a rescue coordination center which is coordinating those cases.
30:00
So what we are basically thought or what we are basically thinking is all the assets that are MRCC like a state-run MRCC already has are already available. That means there are NGOs which are caring about emergency call telephone lines. So that means if people start from Libya right now, they are likely not called the Italian MRCC,
30:22
so the Italian Rescue Coordination Center anymore because it's like super likely that they will pass on this information to the Libyans. So it's like more likely that like voluntarily NGOs are called and they are like trying to manage those cases without human rights violations.
30:40
That means they inform those ships which will, yeah, for example, not the Libyan Coast Guard, et cetera. So we also have like the assets already in place. That means as a maritime coordination center has the Coast Guard, et cetera, we already have ships which are like able to rescue. And last but not least,
31:02
the rescue coordination centers also provide like all the forensic stuff and also like responsible for taking all the evidence. That's what we're doing right now for our ships. That means like with this application we're having running right now, we can track our ships all the time. That means like, for example, we had one incident where, yeah,
31:23
like there was a rescue of the Libyan Coast Guard where Sea Watch was also involved where like more than, yeah, around about 30 people died. And the first accusation of the Libyan Coast Guard was that we were in that territory of waters. It was like quite a fast thing to prove with our data.
31:42
There's also like more neutral data on it, but we could like see super fast and with that, improve super fast and with that, that we were never in the territory waters in this incident. So this kind of stuff is super important also to then give it away to other organizations, for example, forensic architecture,
32:00
who then work with this data to, yeah, display it nicely and also pass it on to possible, yeah, law enforcement authorities which, yeah, deal with it. So what we're doing right now or what we're planning right now is that we want to take this application
32:22
and make it more to land sea organization software and that's really important. We had the cases that there were boats in distress, especially like in the last months and because of the situation that Italy is not feeling responsible anymore for those ships,
32:42
we had the situation that commercial vessels, that means tankers and so on, had to rescue those people and they were, yeah, in the situation that they couldn't really get rid of the people as fast, or like, yeah, so yeah, how to describe it. They weren't allowed to go into Italy
33:00
which means that, for example, the Saros V, one ship was forced to have around about 80 migrants, I guess, for two weeks on board without like really being prepared for it while our ships were blocked in Malta. So what's happening right now, if migrants are in distress,
33:22
that it's super likely that those ships will not rescue them. So we already also had the reports from migrants who said that they were seeing ships when they were in distress and they just passed by. It's not clear if they saw them or not, but yeah, it's happening at this moment.
33:40
So what we are trying to do is, as said, there's AIS which is basically publicly available. So that means everybody can get this data and what we want to do is, now we want to have the database of every ship which is passing through this area. So now we also want to take commercial vessels into our application so that we can, if there's any incident,
34:04
can afterwards see which ships were close by and even if we have reports, what the ship looked like, et cetera, we can maybe find out what ship it were and then look if we can provide information to law enforcement authorities to then maybe get forward with it.
34:21
So that's the basic idea. So can you go to the call? Yeah, so as you have seen now, why we need this Technic 4, now we want to have a little Praxis test and we are all curious if it's gonna happen. So what we are doing now is to call our ship which is currently stranded at sea
34:41
with 32 people rescued already six days ago. Yeah, and it's pretty important because as you can imagine, there's now negotiations ongoing, international negotiations, we are talking with governments, we are talking with cities, whether they take the people
35:00
and then we have to be constantly in contact with the ship to find a solution for these people and that's why we need this Technic and now we're gonna see if it works out. Yeah, hello! Hello! Hello! Hi! Hello! Yeah, so...
35:21
Hello from SeaWatch 3! Hi from the Chaos Communication Conference! How is the situation on board?
35:44
So we are now 67-ish miles south of Malta. Hello! Yeah! On the 22nd of December... Shit, just this week. Yeah, just today.
36:01
Go on. We rescued 32 people at distress at sea. We can hear you. And we have been drifting and moving in international waters since.
36:20
Cool, so... So this is the people who survived inhumane treatment, abuse... Can you see the audience actually? Can you see the question? Can you see the audience? Maybe we can give to the audience...
36:42
We can see the screen. We can see the screen! Alright. So normally you should see the audience here listening to you guys. However, if you can't see them, I can see them and I can refer. So is there any questions you guys want to ask to the ship?
37:01
Then it's your opportunity now. There's a question. Hi, I was wondering when are you planning to go
37:21
to a dock somewhere? Like, how does that work right now in the current situation? Because you have people on board, right? So you need to get them on to land, I'm assuming. So, I just repeat the question because I don't know if it went. So basically, the question was
37:41
when are we going to land? To the dock? Yes. And how does it work? I hope you can hear me now. I have a big delay here. Our plan was to dock
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quite a while ago after we rescued the 32 people from the boat in distress on the 22nd, actually. We went back on the 23rd towards north. But the thing is that no European state, especially not Malta and Italy, who are the closest ports of safety, would grant us permission
38:20
to go into port. So, right now we are just waiting for any opportunity to go to a port of safety that is in the vicinity of our current position. Someone else's question. Any more questions?
38:42
To the ship right now. So, you are looking for a place right now. Who are the parties you are talking to? Are people on land talking to governments? Or are you guys on the ship directly communicating to ports?
39:00
Who is talking to who for this? Yes. So basically, the question was whether the ship... I think at the moment... That was the delay. I'm sorry for that. Now we have to do another... That was a huge delay here.
39:29
So, I think everyone... A lot of people are talking to a lot of people at the moment. Our head of mission is constantly in contact with the back office but also with the...
39:43
If someone has a question raise your hand. There you already can see how difficult it is to get this kind of connection established and that's also why we need you because anything that improves this situation that we have to delay that we don't get the picture that's what we need you for
40:00
and then we have the people talking to governments driving speed boats to rescue people out of the maritime distress that's all we can solve. But this, what is happening here right now that's what you have to solve. Maybe there are questions as well for this group here. Okay.
40:21
We have two mics as well if you raise your hand I can run. Thank you, sorry. What happened with the medical emergency right now on the boat? Were they allowed to dock then? Or is it just with the dock sort of on board? If there is a medical emergency
40:40
we normally ask the closest MRTC that is able to provide a medical evacuation that is normally carried out either by a speed boat or by a helicopter. This happened for example last Friday when there was a medical emergency on the open arms which is the ship from our partner organization
41:02
Proartiva. There was a baby that was in severe distress and so Malta in the end sent a helicopter to fly the baby and the mother to Malta however it took quite some time and in the first place there was no authorization for even a medical evacuation
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so even that becomes pretty difficult in these times now. Someone else question? There are microphones and one and two I can of course run around all the time it's really good for my condition after a long night.
41:41
So my question is what do you do when you aren't allowed to go to a port and when there are more people I mean in danger on the sea so is there a limit I mean there will be a limit on people you can take on the boat but do you have a second boat where you pass the people on sea
42:01
because I mean if you can't like get them on the land what do you do? That's a pretty good question I mean that's what we are trying to solve at the moment and we don't really have an answer to this because normally the law of the sea is pretty clear that people have to be brought to a place of safety as soon as possible after a rescue however currently as you see
42:20
we are hanging around at sea skyping with the Chaos Communication Congress but there is no solution where to disembark the people and also at the same time we have information about three boats in distress right at this very moment and there is our partner organization
42:40
CI which carried out a rescue today morning so yeah we are trying to coordinate with them and with them so the ship is back great
43:00
yeah Hi, so I'm not entirely up to date about the situation of the singular European countries the last thing which comes into my mind was that there was support from the Spanish government did that change in the past few weeks or are they still supporting
43:23
NGOs like yours? Do you want to go on the ship? What did Spain say? So we in our case know there was another rescue by open arms the Organization for Active Open Arms
43:42
over 300 people were rescued and this is the ship that carries the Spanish flag so they had it naturally for Spain our flag is that of the Netherlands so our case is different as we said this is still ongoing
44:00
the whole negotiation of what happens when we get our flag country a safe board provided by them and then we can go there so in this case this is Netherlands and I think what is very important to say here is that Spain
44:20
itself hasn't been very supportive I mean Spain has its own sea rescue going on at the Strait of Gibraltar but there have been a couple of cities in Spain, especially Barcelona where our partners from Proactiva Open Arms are based also who have been very supportive and so the Spanish government has
44:40
bowed also I think to the pressure of the Spanish civil society who like really because Proactiva is pretty big there so the Spanish government has bowed a couple of times but they wouldn't do this for anyone and they didn't do it for us even if we could have just handed over these
45:01
30 people we have on board to our Spanish partners at Open Arms and they could have taken them I have another question here it sounds like there is no real solution and you have to negotiate this on a case by case basis is that actually how it is? That's how it is actually unfortunately
45:22
Number 2, question for people on board First of all, I really do hope that the people on board are okay and they get sort of somewhere to land safely I'm curious about these negotiations
45:40
What kind of leverage can you apply to I suppose it's mostly shame governments into letting you dock? How do these negotiations work? I mean there is besides of shaming the German
46:00
interior minister which we normally do on Twitter there is the law of the sea and the law of the sea is pretty clear and we are currently living in a situation where basic rights are abandoned by the European states which makes it pretty difficult but at the same time
46:21
this law basis is still in place so what we also try to do is to remember them about international conventions they have signed which basically state that there needs to be a port of safety as soon as possible and there is actually obligations for states also to make that happen
46:41
so that's also part of the negotiations however as you said there is not much left as leverage than to publicly shame them for just abandoning basic human rights at sea but maybe
47:01
in addition to that what we have seen and what was a lot of leverage was the Seebrucke movement we have seen in Germany because when we had the first of this kind of standoffs with the lifelines stranded at sea with more than 200 people in front of Malta
47:20
we thought okay if the governments are not reacting if Seebrucke just doesn't do his job we will do it more from a grassroots way so we talked to a lot of cities we talked to several federal states and for example Berlin then said well yes we would welcome them
47:41
and Berlin was the first federal state to do it and many others followed so Hamburg, Bremen Pflitzelkolstein, Thuringen Brandenburg, everyone all of a sudden said okay we would take some of those people and exactly the same thing is happening right now so we had quite some negotiations ongoing the last
48:01
two days with German federal states and right now some of them again Berlin in the first place said that they would welcome these people and that even forced the German Interior Ministry to make a very embarrassing tweet where they said that actually they are open for a solution but only if it's happening on European level
48:21
because Germany already had taken I think 115 people that were rescued at sea so big applause to Germany the biggest and most rich country on the continent has managed to take 115 people not this month, this year this year, not this month
48:40
not this week, this year so yeah, pretty embarrassing tweet by the Interior Minister and we now try to pressure him a bit more by also involving other European states by trying to put pressure to at least take the 32 people where we think that should be possible we have his expensive line open there
49:01
I suggest to communicate okay okay, hi, my name is Friedrich Beckmann, I'm from Zeebrucka-Auxborg we met with Zeebrucka-Auxborg the CSU Fraktion from Auxborg last week and we will meet Oberbergermeister Grebel on the 11th of February
49:21
and we wanted to or what we are doing is we explain the idea that the city of Auxborg will ask the Ministry of Interior in Bavaria to say we are ready and we are welcoming people in this dress which are on boats such that they can leave the boat and you could enter Malta
49:41
harbour and they will just fly over based on paragraph 23, so on how many reasons and do you think that would help if Auxborg would say yes, that's a bright idea, we are ready to take a number of people like
50:01
100, 500, whatever so that you can leave actually the ships ships? gonna answer? oh, sorry could you
50:21
as Rüm already said the Zeebrucka movement and the whole the whole thing of solidarity cities is pretty much our biggest hope and I think this also goes together with the civil MRCC that the only the only solution that can be provided or that looks
50:42
like promising here is that the civil society takes over because the states are not gonna, we've seen this for like almost 4 years now out here that the states are just going out of the zone, are not doing the rescues are not taking the people, are actually hindering rescue operations
51:01
so the only promising solution is that the civil society really steps in and there we need like a lot of creative heads to to find ways to operate to keep us operative and to operate a distribution
51:25
like the Zeebrucka movement did without and parallel to the state authorities ok, so I just heard we are a bit over time so I would
51:42
like to thank a lot to the ship I hope you're doing well I think we're
52:01
I think we're on the ship all a bit tired and exhausted but and we would love to be actually on the congress but we're doing very well and also our guests are sitting next we have a big deck that looks a bit like a tea house at the congress there is a lot of music and conversation and singing and dancing
52:22
and all kind of nice things going on so although we are such a rescue ship we're not actually equipped for staying, for having guests for a longer time on board we try to make best of the situation it's been seven days, we have wonderful people on board who have been through horrible, unimaginable
52:41
things and we still manage to somehow dance together so we're tired and it's hard but it's also cool we just learned there's one more question yeah we can take one more question the counter risk going probably there, number one please shoot okay so first thank you for the work
53:02
you do and my question is practicality set aside would your ships theoretically be able to leave the Mediterranean and enter non-Mediterranean European ports if there would be an opening
53:21
that is mainly a political question, I mean the thing is you did ask non-Mediterranean ports of European countries or of other countries than European countries or both
53:42
for example well we could do this and there has been a discussion and actually Malta told us to go to Rotterdam or some there has been a couple of people saying to us you've got a Dutch flag so go to Rotterdam, we could do
54:01
this yes, but it would take ages, it would take up to two weeks to go from here to Rotterdam and another two weeks to go back so it would keep us out of the Tsar Zone far longer than we want to and secondly we would have to go through the Bay of Biscay which is now in winter
54:22
quite a rough place to be on the seas and it would not be very nice towards our guests who are on our off-deck outside in a tent, in a huge tent actually to go on the Bay of Biscay, I mean the Mediterranean is treacherous enough
54:41
every now and then going in worse waters like the Atlantic at this time of the year would just be irresponsible and yeah and besides staying out of the Tsar Zone and what Chris mentioned the rough weather other reasons there is also high
55:01
cost of doing such a thing it would be very costly to do that so there are many many reasons why we also the law says you have to go to the next closest port of safety and not to some port on the other end of the world or on the other end of the continent yeah
55:20
Golf of Biscay I wouldn't advise you to do currently actually my experience I know it had guys I think we are going to close this session here because their counter was going running and it cost a lot of money of course I would love to thank you there on board and thanks here to
55:40
Trolloflex thanks to Trolloflex, Nick and Ruben and thanks to the VOC for setting up the video link