Legal abuse at the expense of the critical public - and what can be done about it
More and more companies, state actors and wealthy individuals are using legal threats to silence their critics. Blueprint for Free Speech brought the topic to the 2022 Chaos Computer Club (ccc) Congress, where PATFox trainer Dr. Jasper Prigge introduced the concept of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) and possible countermeasures in a conversation with Mona Blum from the Munich working group of critical law students.
The abbreviation SLAPP comes from the USA: Powerful players who want to silence journalists or activists with legal "slaps in the face". These demands are not always legally unfounded, but very often they have an intimidating effect. Because SLAPPs are a strategic tool in the debate over issues essential to the public, they are, if nothing else, slaps in the face of democracy.
SLAPPs are designed to weaken public participation by intimidating and often silencing critics. The best protection against legal attacks is to keep the attack surface as small as possible in advance. If a warning is issued or charges are filed, it is important to act quickly and effectively. However, there are still only a few lawyers who deal with this phenomenon and are able to take on cases at short notice. This is exactly where Pioneering anti-SLAPP Training for Freedom of Expression (PATFox) comes in, which is supported by the European Commission in 11 European countries.
In Germany, Blueprint for Free Speech is putting PATFox into practice by organising trainings for lawyers who want to further educate themselves and build a network of interest on the topic of SLAPP. A first workshop will be held this month, on 27 January. Building a committed community of legal experts is a key element of challenging this systematic abuse of rights, increasing public awareness of the threat SLAPPs pose is another.
As Europe's largest association of hackers and other experts in computer security, the Chaos Computer Club is an important venue for this wider debate on SLAPPs. Again and again, activists from the hacker scene have found themselves the targets of legal intimidation. Last year, the German conservative party CDU sued a hacker associated with the ccc after she exposed a data leak in an app the CDU used during a national election campaign.
Just before New Year, a local offshoot of 2022’s decentralized ccc Congress took place in a vacant lot reactivated by a civil society alliance for free space near Munich's main train station. The location provided a fitting context for a discussion about SLAPPs. The Alliance for Free Space depends on a critical public in order to be able to address the serious problem of numerous vacancies with a persistent shortage of space, especially in Munich. This is the kind of activism that often finds itself the target of SLAPPs. Real estate companies and other powerful interest groups in Germany’s property market have often resorted to SLAPPs in order to silence their critics.
The discussion with Mona Blum from the Munich branch of AkJ* - Arbeitskreis kritischer Jurist*innen with RA Dr. Jasper Prigge (https://www.prigge-recht.de), lawyer for media law and PATFox trainer, was recorded and can be viewed here (in German).