 computer science as well as law and you've also experienced in the blockchain scene and you've worked at a certification authority. You know a lot about confidentiality trust and this is the best introduction to this topic that I could find. So yeah thank you. Our topic today is a self-defending we can see and how we can ensure that after February 24. So and it's also about freedom of speech or freedom of opinion and this Ukraine war the situation is very challenging for many people. I'm not qualified to talk about Ukraine or to talk about details of the war but this topic that is very important to me and that I haven't seen raised that much and this is why I'm here talking about it and this is freedom of speech in the digital world. This is a very current issue. Many of the issues that I'm talking about are very current and raise many questions. Many people and groups having to change their opinions right now and change their point of view. So it's always important to challenge your own views and we should also challenge our image of our own self-defending democracy and freedom of speech. I haven't found my final opinion just yet. I'm still undecided but talking about what is happening in Ukraine and whether that's good or bad sides are very clearland on the digital media and there's a lot of influencing of opinions in the digital media and also social media themselves are involved politically in what is happening there in this whole situation. So we should ask ourselves when they become censorship are there boundaries to freedom of speech and who should enforce them if there are any very popular. I'm not of your opinion but I'll do anything I can to defend your right to voice it and this is something that many people say that they would do it and if we say that we should also allow Vladimir Putin to have his opinion even if it's historically incorrect propaganda. So we should discuss an opinion you want to hear that Ukraine isn't an independent country doesn't have a right to independence. So based on basically false facts so there's a lot of misinformation about who dropped bombs on whom for example and there's always several different opinions about everything that's happening. Also the population in Russia is being forced to lie this is something we seldom seen and it's all aimed at masking injustice. So this is why I want to raise the question what is freedom of speech and what is censorship and in my personal experience with blockchain. Many people in that topic interesting but for me as a person who was born and raised in Germany is very challenging sometimes. It was challenging to me at times that people there are the opinion that anyone any challenging to me at times I think our goal should not be to give people who have a lot of influence or a lot of money. I think our goal of speech basically or a more of a platform and the question is also is it is it a kind of censorship. People then really have the opportunity or platform to speak out. But this is just one topic. I want to also look at the media in Russia and the democracy. Forage elections. It was before the election in Russia there was a lot of gifts given to certain parts of the population and also independent observers were not admitted to the election. And also when Crimea was invaded there was one voice against that and that voice of course became a target. And are they opposition leaders? Are they imprisoned or being concretely attacked? So very much suppressed in Russia. There's a few if any independent media in Russia and there's also surveillance and the possibility to just take down any website at any time and there's heavy regulations or stipulations on foreign broadcasters. After 24 February this has become very much worse. Now I would write ban the term war. You have to call it a special operation and there's other regulations like that and many media just gave up and went into exile. And all of this has exacerbated. There are certain words you can't say and certain topics you can't talk about. In civil society you also see a lot of heart action by the authorities. There have been a lot of arrests during protests allegedly because of coronavirus violations even if the people protested alone. And now that they ban the term war they can arrest people based on that. So any criticism is outright banned. And yesterday or the day before yesterday or something like that. Russia even said that citizens who criticize the government should be extradited from the country quality that we haven't seen before. Of course there's countries where there's certain regulations on what you can say and where for example blasphemy or regulated by the law and we even have such laws in Germany. For example you can't insult people in a certain position. What is new in Russia is concrete terms that are banned. This is a new level and this makes normal life in that country basically impossible. Not for all that is as a consequence for the civil society in Russia is large divides in between families. So some members have access to international press or media and see what is happening and others are completely taken out by the propaganda and can't imagine what is happening in Ukraine or outright believe it. Electrals who have contacts abroad. Maybe many IT specialists as well have fled Georgia. They don't have any numbers on that. But that's a huge immigration wave. And this is something the Russian civic society will also suffer from. It goes further than that. In Russia you are allowed to speak positively on about the invasion. You can only applaud how important that is for Russia and so on. And then there's this whole Nazi myth in Russia to preach people because propaganda has just come that far. And it all feels like 1984 by George has just comes out for a while. The famous freedom is freedom to say that 2 plus 2 equals 4. If you have that anything else follows. And this is a very fitting analogy. I think because it's not about suppressing opinions. It's about suppressing the truth. Something else than cancel culture because many Russian people always talk about cancel culture or are saying that Russia is being canceled. And that's just wrong because cancel culture is about opinions. Someone voices their opinions and other people react. And that may not be a nice reaction. And the person may not like it. But essentially it's two opinions clashing. But this is not censorship. But not only Russia is an actor in a protagonist in this information war. Ukraine is also very active in Ukraine. Russian parties have been and until the invasion has stopped. This is certainly debated. We can see that it's very difficult to ban a party. We've seen that in German well. And then in Ukraine there's also they're trying to put the press in one line like them report the same with the justifications that you would need to have reliable information. And of course it's understandable in such a situation of war that sometimes certain measures are just needed. That doesn't mean that everything that happens in Ukraine is good. But some measures are just needed at the moment. And also in parliaments and in the Duma and so on there's a lot of influence on opinions in the parliament. That's influence that's certainly justified but still has ramifications on who make decisions. So let's get to Germany. What happened in Germany? What stood out to me is that RT Russia today was banned in Germany. Was a law that preceded the Ukraine invasion. It was introduced on 18 March and it wasn't directly justified with this situation in Ukraine. But the justification was that RT doesn't fulfill the standards that apply to German state media. It's not about the current situation. It's about normal rules and regulations that just apply here. But in the EU there was an RT Spotnik ban in the context of sanctions. And here there's a lot more potential for criticism because this wasn't justified with the exact content of these broadcasters but with the war. So it's more difficult. And other countries like the UK and the US have taken similar actions. The media themselves have also withdrawn from these countries and but other media went back such as BBC. BBC has returned to writing quite and reporting such as CNN are reporting quite aggressively about the situation in Ukraine. Russia is reacting. It's actually screaming very loudly. We suppressed. These are influenced by the enemies and they are basically trying to counter the measures equally. So there's a lot of justifications that don't have to do with the actual situations. There are accusations of terrorism and fake news and just outright arbitrary measures. But Russia once lays a claim to freedom of speech. But they didn't give the other side that same privilege. So still the question is why does the West react like that? That's certainly a justified question in Ukraine. We can see are some legitimate protection interests that have to be weighed against freedom of speech and human rights in other countries that's different. But I would like to talk about some principles. One is freedom of speech. This is a human right, a basic human right in democracies. Well, democracy can only coexist with human rights. So if there's no human right, there can be no democracy and no rule of law. And the last point is division of force. This is also not possible without a rule of law. Rule of law means that laws are being ensured. So that convictions are final and laws are being applied and adjust what legislate can rely on that. Now let's talk about the division of force. There's the legislative force. So in context of freedom of speech, this would be certain bans. Force is, well, executes those decisions and their judicative force judges in cases in certainty. So boundaries to freedom of speech, those cases have to be ruled legally. So it's very difficult to talk about censorship. Maybe censorship, but it could also be that another is being protected. What is freedom of speech by a person has in a state to voice their opinion as they like. And especially in Germany, it's defined in a way that you can say what you want, basically. But it doesn't mean that you don't have to face the consequences of your speech. So your speech can be banned, certain things can be banned. It's very important in a democracy. If we don't have freedom of speech, you can't voice your opinion. And if you can't voice your opinion, you can't vote, for example. You have to be able to criticize the government. You don't have any freedom of speech. It's not possible anymore. This also has something to do with the freedom of press. People have to have access to this information. When you don't know what true and false is, then it's hard to build up your own critical opinion. So what is really true or false? Who should I vote for, for example? Therefore, censorship in democracies are always not allowed. Then you don't have a democracy in this case if it's there. Freedom of speech is very important and also protected in autocrosses or dictatorships. This isn't the case because this freedom actually works against this type of autocracy. Related to censorship in democracy, or attack one and attack the other. To come back to the conflict in Ukraine, it was developed very strongly in the direction of democracy and also for application into the EU. If it wasn't a democracy, it wouldn't fulfill the criteria necessary for it to join the EU. It's why Russia wants to go against Ukraine. Now Russia is active in attacking freedom of speech inside Ukraine. Also, physically with tanks, violence, and soldiers when Russia is conquered. Also, very dangerous for everyone's life. Also for their human rights there. It's not possible there to talk about the war there. It's not possible there to have freedom of speech. Therefore, there's a fight there to allow freedom of speech. They're trying to fight against this and to fight against what Russia is doing. That's the situation in Ukraine. By us, it looks something different. But also here, Russia is trying to influence us and to influence democracy and freedom of speech. For themes, for example, anti-EU, there's also the issue of refugees coming from Syria and then there's coming more. There's a strong theme in terms of what Russia is trying to influence there. Also, the refugees are coming from Syria also because of Russia's influence in the area with bombs. Maybe not different from what we're seeing in Ukraine. There's an issue of climate change. Russia has a very strong opinion in terms of what climate change is in the media. There's a big problem and Sputnik and other Russia media, they're directly connected to the government there. There's fake news there. Also, there's a very strong lobby here. We've all seen this. There's dependency on the politics there in total. There's a couple of Russia friendly parties in the U.S. also in other countries and we need to observe this. On the other hand, yes, there's also an argument here. Also, democracies such as the U.S. do this as well. Why is this only something against Russia? However, we are doing something intensively against it. So there are active protests. You can go out in the street. There's many actions on the street. You have to look at the difference of what tendencies we have. So the U.S. and other countries have and those measures being taken by the West aren't always correct. But the situation in Russia is that individuals are profiting instead of their general public. Russia always uses a very strong rhetoric against the measures by the West. But they're basically doing the same thing. I think that democracies should defend themselves. The rule of law and a good living for everyone, alternatives, resilience. This is also something we've heard about today. But it's more than that. We have laws that even restrict freedom of speech sometimes. For example, those laws against manipulative advertisements. You can't voice every opinion. You can't, for example, lie in order to make a contract. So there's a lot of rules that you can like or you can't like laws against insults, slander level, stealing. So you can't always say what you want. And we're also protecting our elections. We have rules against or rules specifying how you can advertise for elections or how candidates can advertise themselves. This is something you don't have in the US, for example. In Germany, you can't use state media to proposition your own ideas, political ideas. So a dictatorship that attacks other countries and commits genocides. We have had that before in Germany. And this is why we have certain laws. And this is why Germany has some authority also on self defending democracy. We all know the first article from the German constitution, the human dignity shall not be infringed. And to protect it, that's the aim of all force by the state. And article five defines freedom of speech. It says there shall be no censorship. So this refers to what we've talked about earlier, but there are limitations, for example, to protect youth. And also education. Education must be treated the constitution. So there are limits to our democratic freedom of speech in a democracy. And also, sometimes parties have been banned in Germany. And article 18 of their constitution says if you misuse freedom of speech against the democracy, you can lose that right. So the state in terms of defending democracy. And of course, this is very difficult to enforce. And for a good reason, you need the highest constitutional court to approve of that. So there are limits to a freedom of speech to protect certain interests, like the right to not be insulted or slandered. Now, like to come from the state to our social media. Social media are active contributors in this conflict. So there are actions and reactions from the media. YouTube has already banned the RT Germany channel because of misinformation related to coronavirus, interestingly. And all the other social media. I'll make it short for time constraints reasons. One after the other. And all of the Russian media, not all of them, but the state media, basically. And Russia has been acted by limiting social networks within Russia. So it's very difficult, basically, to get information into Russia right now. So social media have become active contributors in this conflict. But social media only reacted after the war started. So this was all after the law that prohibits people from using the term war. And it was after the sanctions from the Western countries. So it's not really proactive. It was rather so the reaction by those large corporations came late. It's kind of reminiscent of the capital situation last year in biggest sanctions also only were imposed afterwards after what happened. And was a lot of influence on the elections, a lot of manipulation in the social media. And they've reacted, but only ever happened really late. And after the actual worst case had already come true. So it is kind of arbitrary, in my opinion. Social media and freedom of speech, the question is, can you make social media protect freedom of speech? Is that their escort obligation? In that regard, you should always differentiate between state actors and private persons. Private persons have a right to, for example, forbidden people from using their business, but also they have an obligation to adhere to basic human rights. And if that is not the case, the state has to intervene. The state has to ensure that freedom of speech is given or that basic human rights are being ensured. So it's not all on the social media themselves. Human rights are global. They shouldn't be dependent on local law, but so they should also extend to social media. It's an interesting question. How much should platforms have to ensure freedom of speech? And when should the state intervene? Who guarantees that everyone's rights are being respected? And how can that be enforced? Is that something that should be done globally? Or are certain criteria that you can apply? One, I would say, is human dignity. So this is about insults, but it's also about protecting certain groups. So the integrity of certain groups must sometimes be protected, but also if a state uses too much propaganda and people in those states as well. When democratic structures are being attacked, or not prosecution, is that possible in social media to prosecute crimes? And how is that done? How should attacks on human rights be prosecuted? And how should they be amended? So we have to have prosecution follow suit. And I haven't found my final opinion in regard to those questions. Okay, so these topics are very happy. That was an introduction from the presenter. What is important is truth. Okay, I'm getting very bad audio. I'm trying to translate best as I can. Sorry, audio is too bad at the moment. There's people who've been active since 2017. And there's the charter of their digital basic rights of the European Union. And the initiators are from a foundation that's called Zeitstiftung. But there's also criticism. Audio is very bad, sorry. The criticism towards this initiative is that it's very much based on wishful thinking. So what new developments do we have? We have an information war. And certain actors are consciously making an effort to divide other democracies and states. But this is a phenomenon that we've always had. So it's democracies against autocracies, but also vice versa. And democracy should also be defended on social platforms. Thank you very much for your presentation. This presentation was very much in depth and also philosophical at times. And I have one question to the audience, and to anyone who would like to ask questions and use their Q&A function. So what can we do? Sorry, the audio is very bad. I can't really translate. So you should always remind people of the value of democracy. And it's not always against the state, but you should also fight with the state. Resilience within the population should be promoted and it's very high good. And you should always know that human rights are more important than dependencies that we may have or may feel that we have at the moment. So solidarity is also important. And the population also has an obligation to defend the democracy and the good that we've achieved. And we must find the limits of freedom of speech and we must find the right level that we can use to achieve progress. Very bad audio, sorry. My conclusion is I'm still unsure. As you may have realized, I've not found my final opinion. I'm happy to discuss with you in the breakout room in a minute and maybe you have some answers as to what is okay and what is not okay. And maybe we can develop some strategies. Sorry, the audio is so bad I can't understand a single word she's saying. Thank you so much. Thank you again that is the presenter speaking for this very in depth presentation that reminded us of what we have in these times of crisis and war. It's so important to remember what a luxury our democracy is. Sorry, very bad audio. So this presenter is asking what's true and this is a very important question. So parallel again to your certification authority, are there any criteria that we can use to differentiate truth from truth information? Yeah, I've held a seminary about that actually, that speaker speaking. So this is a question that isn't easy to answer and that I can't answer in the short time we have here. Yeah, because we're quite ahead in time.