I finally got my ID card returned. Collecting it from Vienna’s old townhall (picture above) gave me the opportunity to meet the beautiful word “Amtshauswart”. And I also learned that the reason for forcing people to collect their ID cards and passports from a separate place than their other lost stuff (background here and here) is their very best personal interest: It was different, some time ago. Now it’s like this because too many people declared passports lost but didn’t revoke this after having received it from lost and found which then caused issues at borders as the - authentic - passport was still marked as stolen in some databases.

Instead of educating people or changing the database design, the benevolent administration makes any misbehavior impossible by forcing people to come, to take the document and to sign that one had received it again. By some magic the entry in the database is disappearing then as well. Some might call this “little big brother” or “security by design”.

I am still not sure whether there is any legal basis for this process or whether this is just someone’s personal idea.

NSFW (Nikolaus’ Song for the Week)

This week’s song is from Nun flog Dr. Bert Rabe.

There’s (again a very different) version on YouTube that is four times longer than the ‘original’ and combines two very nice songs.

Vogelscheuche (Scarecrow), however, has its right on its own.

Retrospect

Legal Tech Hackathon

We had five interesting student presentations on our pitch-day, each one with a nice and innovative idea. The two winning teams presented a patent search tool via synonyms and a tool to search for new editions of books that are cited in a bibliography.

We had a very friendly and comptent and prominent and diverse jury and there are some very nice posts on LinkedIn about the event, including one from FH’s vice rector and one on the beer brewed at the Fachhochschule. I believe and hope that students from both institutions learned on how the others think and work.

#arsboni

Johannes Warter gave an excellent overview on how difficult it is to develop health apps in Austria and Europe and why the law, however, might help.

It was a special episode for 2 reasons: First, I was not in my #laundry and second it was episode nr. 500.

Pint of Science

I met Katta Spiel there who is Assistant Professor for “Critical Access in Embodied Computing” at the HCI Group of TU Wien. She gave an excellent talk on how technology forms how we can or can’t access information and can or can’t participate in societal debate.

My gig was on AI and unacceptable risks and I was good in ruining the audience’s mood. The pub where we played (dasGru) was a total work of art teleporting us back to the 80ies. It smells like in Kaktus Bar or Krah-Krah 1983 and it looks like in Prater 1981 or so.

It was nice that both presentations were translated simultaneously into sign language so that hearing impaired could follow.

Data Protection Officers’ Yearly Conference

Thursday brought me (via train and bycicle) to Linz - it’s really remarkable how fast and convenient this connection has become.

I learned about recent decisions of Austria’s DPA, about the media privilege, the freedom of information law and AI in public administration. Very interesting, worth going. Dr. Johannes Schmid from Städtebund and Dr. Matthias Schmidl from Datenschutzbehörde were excellent hosts.

Prospect

We have 2 wonderful events on Tuesday. The morning is on AI

the afternoon on six years of GDPR.

Registration is still possible and the line up is marvelous. You should come, believe me.

Berlin

Like for so many years before, I will have the privilege to chair a full day in Berlin at Euroforum’s data protection congress in Berlin on Thursday. I will speak (again) about NIS 2.

This year’s highlight for me is, possibly, to welcome my former student Meike Kramp in her (relatively new) role as head of Berlin’s data protection authority. But there are not less than four heads of Getrman DPAs during the day, which is awesome.

Concordia

Walter Strobl from Presseclub Concordia is speaking on Governance in Austria’s Public Broadcaster. As this is a #laundry-edition that was recorded this Wednesday on a very urgent topic, I decided to put it online a little earlier than originally planned so that you can see it already.

Concordia is having their yearly ball on Friday, May 24th in Vienna’s townhall and I am very much looking forward to being there again. This picture is from last year.

Daisy

can be very clear in stating that nobody should dare to take her ball (or her stick).

Have a wonderful week!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)