Will clandestine conference with Clegg be nixed?
The freedom of mobile information could be under threat as German government officials and representatives of US tech corporations are allegedly meeting to discuss the censorship of ‘misinformation’ over the Internet, Germany’s Bild newspaper has revealed. The discussions were promoted by the German administration’s desire to control public perception following the spread of what it felt was the wrong type of Covid coverage. According to privacy activist Reclaim the Net the meeting sought to “clarify how the challenge can be met in principle”. The “challenge” was, as the name given to the gathering explains, “The coronavirus pandemic and the spread of misinformation, false information and disinformation that can be observed in this context.”
Now German politician Wolfgang Kubicki, VP of the Bundestag from the FDP party, is demanding “clarification” of the events, recalling free speech-related Article 5 of the German Constitution. Kubicki has asked that German citizens be informed whether the former government, led by Angela Merkel, violated one of the country’s most venerated legal tenets. Germany has a provision in its Constitution that is promises to guarantee free speech for its citizens: Article 5 states that “every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures, and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources.”
The alleged Big Tech speech suppression summit was organised at Germany’s Interior (police) Ministry, with participation of officials from other ministries including healthcare and foreign affairs. The government was represented by Steffen Seibert, a close of the German chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel.
According to Bild, lobbyists for the US corporations were in attendance too. While it did not deny Bild’s story, the German government reportedly said the meeting came to no resolutions. “Of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that there was a possible influence on Twitter and co. not only in the US, but also in this country,” Kubicki said.