Postcards available for free in Cafe Hold, a wonderful Italian Bar and Restaurant in Vienna.

NSFW (Nikolaus’ Song For the Week)

Wheras last week’s song was completly new to me, this week’s NSFW comes from a person whose music has given me comfort for many, many years. It’s from Lhasa De Sela whose much, much too early death will be commemorated for the 15th time on January 1.

YouTube has a live version (technical sound quality poor, but it’s however beautiful)

May I also recommend this live-album

Retrospect

Data Seizure

The never ending story of the Austrian Law of Criminal Procedur (StPO) on seizure of data, in particular, on mobile phones, continues. The current status is a draft law that needs to make its way through the whole legislative process until January 1, due to a Constitutional Court decision from December 2023. The draft is a compilation of problems and the suggesting parties have lost their majority in the national assembly. The situation is truly chaotic and disturbing, in my view. I tried to clarify and discuss matters with Shirin Ghazanfari in #arsboni again.

I am, in particular, concerned about the institution “Rechtsschutzbeauftragter” that is supposed to be the (independent?) watchdog in these cases and about the technical unclarities coming with this law.

The moment I am writing this (Wednesday evening), the draft, however, makes its way through the Parliament and is supported by ÖVP, SPÖ, Liberals and the Greens.

Luf Symposion

Gerhard Luf, professor of legal philosophy at UNIVIE celebrated his 80th birthday. Elisabeth Holzleithner, Anne Kühler and Alexander Somek organised a symposion in his honor on Immanuel Kant and Gerhard Luf.

The event was well attended - many people (including me) in the audience owe Luf a great deal for his 40 years long work as instructor and role model in legal philosophy. He was outstandingly open minded and supportive in every relevant situation. I am still grateful for his very friendly assessment of my PHD thesis in 1997.

This is him in his Thank-you adress - and Elisabeth Holzleither who delivered a really nice and thought provoking speech on “Ein ewiger Friede für „Völker von Teufeln“?”.

In the picture below she is together with Anna Kühler and the second keynote speaker Stefan Hammer - and a Kant-quote on screen I clearly do not agree with (but didn’t have the opportunity to contest it in public there. If time had allowed, I would have used Fukyama and The End of History and the Last Man as counter-argument).

Data Protection Moot Court

I had the pleasure to act as jury member in one of the preliminary rounds of the Data Protection Moot Court. Although this started with a serious issue - one of the teams not showing up without prior notice and without any indication that soemething was wrong - it turned out to be an outstandingly positive experience for me. I was just flashed by the quality - both legally and rhetorically - of all 3 members of team 11 who did a really oustanding job in the best interest of their client. And the case is just great. And it is so impressive how brilliantly students can perform under stressful conditions.

Running a moot court is a real challenge. I am grateful to Klaudia, Mariana, and Marie-Catherine who do this on top of everything elso pro bono, to Elias who supports them, to our co-founders Marco and Martin and all our supporters and sponsors.

Let’s see whether I will see team 11 again next week: The final hearing is scheduled for 16 December 2024 at 17:00 CET.

Trustee Meeting

We hosted a 3 days meeting of our project TRUSTEE in Vienna.

Here’s more on this data federation project’s website. Katarzyna, Clara and Ibrahim did an excellent job in organising this.

Prospect

#arsboni

We are going to have two sessions next week, presumably the last ones for 2024. Both are on very fundamental issues: On Thursday we will discuss facial recognition by and for law enforcement in times of AI.

And Friday at 10.00 will allow us to make up with a session that needed to be postponed a few weeks ago that deals with the future of legal profession:

Simon and Eva-Maria speak for the organisation of inhouse lawyers in Austria that celebrated its 10th birthday a few weeks ago.

Platforms and Law

Wednesday afternoon will be packed with lots of information from Boris, mainly running the show here, and three panel debates with (in the order of appearance) Mag. Dr. Matthäus Uitz, LL.B., M.Sc., LL.M (Yale), Mag.a Birgit Noha, LL.M., Dr. Lukas Cavada, Mag. Andreas Unterkofler, Mag. Daniel Lackner, Mag.a Gabriele Zgubic, Mag.a Iris Thalbauer, Ing. Norbert Presslaber, MBA, MMag.a Dr.in Ranjana Andera Achleitner, Mag.a Tanja Fachathaler, Mag. Hannes Seidelberger, Andreas Grassl, MA.

Free entry, registration requested, no stream.

Look and Feel

2 1/2 podcast episodes that I heard during my runs and found interesting:

This is about a freedom of information claim (according to regulation 1049/2001) against the European Commission in relation to SMS exchanged between Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer on Covid-vaccines. LTO has a little more on this case.

Interview + reactions on the interview with Dr. Sonja Sagmeister on alleged interventions at ORF and their consequences.

There are very intersting recent developments in this matter as Sagmeister’s job contract termination with ORF was declared invalid by the court on Wednesday (in first instance).

Daisy

© Felix Forgó

can shine in purple in the dark now.

Have a wonderful week!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)