This monday I had a nice opportunity to visit Belgian Pirates - in Antwerp, one of the largest cities in Belgium (and the largest one in Flanders). Antwerp is a very nice city - and the place we met at Dageraadplaast was great. As it is very often with Pirates - we talked about politics. 

In 2014 Belgium will see triple elections: Regional (Flemish and Wallonian), National ones and European. And the Belgian Pirate Party would like to participate in the run; to try to challenge all the other major parties. In order to do so, a petition must be submitted; a party has to obtain at least five thousand signatures on a petition (we do have a similar criteria in the Czech Republic for example for the presidential elections). Having this in mind, The Antwep Pirate community met and discussed about this issue, as well as about the other issues around local politics. 

It proved to be uneasy, but a steady progress can be seen; the people are fulfilling the petition forms, trying to help the Pirate party to participate in the major political game in Belgium. They even did attract sypmathisers at the very spot where we met. Pierre de Coubertin once said: The important thing is not to win, but to take part.  In order to take part for the Belgian Pirates, many of the forms have to be still filled. Besides,

Yesterday I went to an interesting SAAB seminar "Virtual Integrity and e-espionage. Can we tame the internet?" with very intriguing guest speakers.

Paul Nemitz, Director Fundamental Rights & Union Citizenship at the European Commission was having an intense discussion with Dorothee Belz, Associate General Counsel for Europe at Microsoft, over why the cyber space is insecure and who, and how should tame it and ensure its security.

From one side Mr. Nemitz was defending the rule of law position, stating that policy makers determine the direction nowadays technology takes and industry should follow (the rule of democracy) and from the opposite side, Mrs Belz defending the position that since current laws are lagging behind with the so needed amendments, the “wild, wild west” principle, naturally turns technologies into law makers.

Some curious questions about how to establish a balance between the technological development and democratic lawmaking without damaging techno progress, derived from their argumentations. Statements that current rules obviously need moderation and transformation to deliver real protection was also heard, and how industry and legislators can work together towards building stable long term protection policies was one of the main topics.

Yesterday, Amelia participated in the Cybersecurity forum - an event organized by the Security and Defense platform; a military think-tank here in Brussels. The main topic for the evening was simple - how to demystify security as a topic and how to attract new specialists. Everyone has its own view where the problem might be. Four guests - Patryk Pawlak from EUISS, br. gen Bruce T. Crafword from US European Command, the deputy assistant secretary for emerging security challenges of NATO, Jamie Shea, and our MEP Amelia Andersdotter - exchanged their opinions. 

Both guests from the military sector (ie. Mr. Crawford as well as Mr. Shea) mentioned in their speeches out the current problem of security: it is simply not "hip". In order to decide for a career in the cybersecurity, one must show his overall interest in the topic - and perhaps the military does a poor job in addressing as well as in looking for people, who'd like to participate in this. 

Amelia however presented a totally different view on the topic. The current cyberspace is pretty much a permanent battlefield; otaining data in any possible way can be much more effective than protecting them, so more and more efforts are invested again into invasive technologies; snooping, security breaching etc. Only a small part of our means can be reserved for security - and if so, how can we be sure that everything is properly protected?

Some of you might have seen the recent episode of exile6e where many prepartations for our copyright session were already described. Besides of that we were getting prepared the ICT in ART exhibition (that will be featured in one of the following episodes) as well as the movie screening (We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks).

So, what was our session about?