Hi, I'm Yarimin. I'm principal economist in the unit responsible for responsible business conduct in the European Commission. I'm here today at this uh very important conference because I truly believe that privacy is a core value for our society in general. We are living at times where privacy as a fundamental human right is more and more brought into problems by an overzealous interpretation that we see in certain quarters when it comes to technologies that actually enhance privacy. And I would therefore call for a more balanced approach where actually we start first with the merits of data protection, privacy and individual freedom and then restrict enforcement of these rules only where there's an absolute necessity without throwing the child out of the best tube uh together by endangering the life of programmers.
Uh that is very positive for innovation and competitiveness of our economy by setting negative precedences. So the knife doesn't know whether it is cutting stick or a heart. How do we explain this metaphor to lawmakers? Um who still sees tools like tornado cash as a threat? [Music] The bottom line of your question is a very important one and that is how can we ensure the same treatment for different types of tools whether they are in the real economy whether in finance or even in digital systems and I think we have legal standards from the past we have an approach from the past where a tool doesn't have an identity in itself a tool as the name says is used by someone And I think we need to look at who uses the tool for what purpose.
So my understanding so far has been that when there is a tool that has been built by someone but then the tool has been sold or the tool has been brought to the market, the tool is outside of the control of the person or the organization that build it. Then we have to look at the user of the tool to see who is liable and responsible for action. And that is what you have in the real economy that you have in traditional sectors. But apparently you do not have it in the tornado cash case or in fact when we look at certain offiscation technologies like mixers where suddenly the mere fact that you created something that you created a smart contract that you coded something gives you the liability even if you have lost the control and the influence on the end user. And that is a massive concern because it's not a thing that only relates to crypto.
It's not a thing that only relates to blockchain. But imagine AI where you have the same problem. Imagine now that you see these new tools popping up where you have a chat box and you speak with an AI agent and at the time that you speak that app is coding a smart contract along the lines of what you are discussing. Who is liable? You could say that the programmer is liable.
But what is the program as a child? We are starting with technology now that is so simple that every six-year-old will be able to use at a certain moment that I create something. Is it then still the responsibility even if the code is out there, the code is open source, the code is public? I don't think so. And that is why we need to go back to the basics.
A tool is a tool but the responsibility for using a tool use it. What will make them say finally say that this is wrong? A lot of people are saying that privately but are concerned to speak publicly because we have a massive divide between personal experience of those that do have that personal experience or if you speak with them privately that understand your point on the one hand side and what is seen as an expectation from their organization on the other hand side. So for example when you talk to politicians and I speak to many most of them are very reasonable on privacy but then tell me it is the party line or it is the expectation that society has on them that they are critical on things that can also be abused for illegitimate purposes. So on the one hand side, privacy is very important for each of us individually, but it does not yet have the societal recognition as being of massive importance for governments or political parties that think in terms of global problems, geopolitics, the financial and economic aspects of society, etc.
And privacy is something as a given where they say, okay, we are a liberal society. What is the problem after all? Unless one is really exposed to something individually where you realize that hey it doesn't work the way it is supposed to work they're unfortunately very slow in taking up this topic and this is why I think we need much more dialogue much more patience also to bring these ideas forward but also we need to expose the decision makers even more with real examples of how concrete people suffer in the current set of rules that we apply especially by organizations that overly emphasize the negative sides of technology and then try to enforce it the hard way which is the wrong thing to do. You said blockchain is a community is teamwork. It's not just profits.
What is your vision for human- centered digital Europe? I think that we have been very progressive by bringing forward specifically our rules on data protection and privacy. For example, in the GDPR where a lot of things can be discussed, but the bottom line of the GDPR is that data belong to you and you decide yourself on who uses data for what purposes. It's a voluntary system controlled by you. And this is the bottom line of all of that, which is in my opinion a very strong statement in favor of freedom and privacy.
And this actually reflects Europe how I see it because we are the continent of self-organization and decentralization. If you look at the history of Europe the last few thousand years Europe has been a continent of regions where different legal systems have emerged where different trading patterns have emerged that started trading and connecting with each others but not along state borders but cultural borders or commercial and legal activities that they share. And this makes us the best place actually to accept that we are a set of different value systems, different communities that have to find a way to interact peacefully and meaningfully. And this is I think what the technology can enable. Blockchain finally is the first technology that we have that can scale the self-organization in local communities to a higher even global level because it provides the basis for at the same time highly transparent and highly valuebased and safe transactions individually without the intermediaries and this is a chance we didn't have before but which fully aligns to us.
So I think it helps us find back to who we were in the past and this is the whole idea of Europe. Uh perhaps one last remark on this point because it's very important. People always see the European Union or Europe as one thing but it is not the European Union is actually 27 countries with different governments with different cultures that have found a way to work together and this is I think how we should see the digital space. The digital space is big enough for all of us for all our ideas to materialize to decide for ourselves with whom we want to work together and with whom not and we can only do that through blockchain because we don't have any other technology that creates the trust layer. Good.
Uh you you got a question? One more question. So uh you mentioned that you know many politicians uh in private they're very reasonable in public they want to tell the party line who creates the party line the party line is in my opinion many things are a perception of things that exist or not that always remind me of Kafka and this guy that is sitting in front of the door all his life but just doesn't dare to go through because he thinks that the door is shut or that it is not allowed to go through the door and at the end of the life he realizes that the door is open and I could have passed it all my life. I think that in a way the party line is an argument to make life simple because politicians and I fully respect and understand that have a thousand things to do have many different topics to cover and when they're not really into something that drives them by their own desire and heart they say that oh that has been decided by others that's the party line I think that we need to overcome this barrier because at the end of the day who else should be the party line as those politicians that have actually been elected and sit in the parliaments or sit in governance and represent us. And this is also something where I think this can be improved by making them understand that what we are talking about here blockchain as for example in the crypto space is a perfect example of a democratic technology that can actually be used for democratic decision making for voting for better explaining the will of the people because we are not sitting here in a situation where we vote once every four years but we in fact have a mechanism where people can have a much smoother knowledge of what societies and communities actually want and translate that into a future party line.
Let them become more digital. Let them interact and vote in digital spaces and then see what actually the party line is. It is obsolete. I find in these times that the party line is something that perhaps once a year is discussed at a party congress with a few representatives whereas we have so many more people out there that feel excluded by this process. [Music]
Automatic transcript — names and jargon may be misspelled.