Newsletter

Week 07/2025

In the twilight in-between

Nikolaus Forgó

07 Feb 2025 — 6 min read

I was skiing for 3 days in Axamer Lizum. This is detail from an outdoor ski hut there. I can relate very much with the figure, this week.

NSFW (Nikolaus’ Song For the Week)

This week’s NSFW needs to be, of course, from Mariann Faithfull who passed away on January 30th.

YouTube:

Nick Cave’s contribution is an important assett of this beautiful song. And here’s a beautiful video about the making of the song with Nick Cave interviewing her and commenting in a very careful and kind conversations.

One sees lots of studio equipment here and it’s very nicely filmed. Warren Ellis participates too. Cave is very right about what he says about her voice (at 3’ 05’’; with a Bösendorfer very prominently put there).

Retrospect

The President of Vienna’s Criminal Court, Mag. Friedrich Forsthuber, gave a remarkable interview in the laundry on dangers of modern democracies by social media. He is brilliant in making his points, in particular because of all the historical arguments he uses. Trump, 1933/1934, the Austrian Constitution, X, antidemocrats using social media as propaganda instrument and shitstorms due to court decisions are the main topics.

Some of the topics covered are also discussed in ORF Report with an interesting (but short) debate between Michael Fleischhacker and Armin Thurnher. It’s a little ironic that ORF - finally - becomes interested in its fate and media politics so intensely and covers the topic frequently.

Platforms and their (non) regulation was also discussed in an #arsboni session with Ranjana Andrea Achleitner. Ranjana is an outstanding and brilliant legal scholar and it was a real pleasure to talk to her.

We share a lot of criticism on DSA and DMA - which is possibly not good news for the further success of these legal instruments.

Unacceptable AI Risks

There is more bad legal text to lament about: I needed to read the most recent “offical” EU publication on AI. This is 135 (!) pages of a legally non binding text on a single article (5).

I felt rather exhausted and frustrated (here as well) after the reading and ranted on it on LinkedIn. Frustratingly, dozens of LinkedIn members simply repeat the fact that the guidelines were published, but only a few, very few, share some (first) criticism.

Prospect

I will take a week off next week. I will go skiing.

© Birgit Forgó-Feldner

This is why there won’t be an #arsboni next week. But the subsequent week will be superbusy. Let me share one announcement already now therefore:

On February 20 I will speak at Ruhr Universität Bochum about legal issues of AI in University Education.

The programme is online. I am very much looking forward to this as AI-related changes in education are very much of interest to me at the moment. You may expect further content on this here and elsewhere, for example in an #arsboni on Monday, February 17th, at 10.00 am.

Björn is the author of a very relevant text on the topic I want to recommend warmly.

Déjà Vu

The communication between Markus Kupferpblum and Martin Nittnaus “Wild but Heart” that I mentioned in Weekly 06/2025 is on YouTube now. No wine is no solution either.

Look and Feel

Sky and Snow

I was skiing for three days, close to Innsbruck. Although one could write a long sermon about what’s not really running well in Austrian winter tourism and how climate change affects ecology and economy everywhere, I want to abstain from this today and share one image explaining better than words why this can be a beautiful leisure activity (no filter!). With a little bit of blinking, the passage between sky and snow looks like a chartline with a slightly positive outcome at the end. It could be a symbol of a learning curve in life. People in my age would then be, probably, somewhere in the extreme low before some incline is to be expected in the last third.

DOGE

I am trying to understand what’s going on with Elon Musk’s Department of Governance Efficiency (DOGE). Everything heard about this is just crazy and haunting. The data protection rule in the President’s Executive Order is a joke: “Agency Heads shall take all necessary steps, in coordination with the USDS Administrator and to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure USDS has full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems. USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards.”

German (and European) (legacy) media is very poor in covering what’s going on here, Heise gives at least some first hints, but does little more than quoting US media. The Guardian has a little more. The best sources I know so far, are, ironically, Wikipedia and Reddit.

There is plenty of reason of concern. What could go wrong with Elon Musk and a group of unknown engineers in their 20ies outside administration getting read and write access to every (non classified) data that is processed by public authortities, including tax and payment data? The Executive order states: “Agency Heads shall take all necessary steps […] to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure USDS has full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”

As The Atlantic puts it, “Musk has wielded enormous power.” and is, as said in another article, close to a "coup d’État.

People on Bluesky describe the size of the problem

that looks like a textbook description of a complete IT-security and privacy meltdown.

The New York Times (Paywall) follows:

“To describe the current situation in the executive branch as merely a constitutional crisis is to understate the significance of what we’re experiencing. “Constitutional crisis” does not even begin to capture the radicalism of what is unfolding in the federal bureaucracy and of what Congress’s decision not to act may liquidate in terms of constitutional meaning.”

As Friedrich Forsthuber rightly says, the elegance of our constitution (or any [data protection] law) won’t suffice if people in power don’t care about them and separation of powers has eroded.

And Max Schrems, rightly, rubs some additional European salt into this wound.

Über Medien

Über Medien has a very remarkable interview.

This is the story of Jolanda Spiess-Hegglin, a victim of a sexual offence after a spiked drink, followed by a several years long campaign against her and her personality rights, orchestrated, inter alia, by the Swiss boulevard medium “Blick”, told by herself.

Blick was recently sentenced to pay a compensation of more than 300.000 Swiss Franks due to these violations of her personality rights in four articles. Der Standard has more on this, NZZ has a critical interview with an expert and I am currently reading her book.

The 57 pages long decision that is fully available on Spiess-Heglin’s website is in particular interesting because of the calculations made to quantify the profit stemming from the four online articles.

She says in the interview that her personal costs in this legal battle have exceeded 600.000 Swiss Franks so far (!) and have lasted for more than 10 years with no indicator to end soon.