If you're new to the channel, I'm Gold Penning at the new car track SCV reviews on YouTube and today we're in the brand new 2024 Mitsubishi Mirage courtesy of younger Mitsubishi in Hagerstown, Maryland. For more information on their inventory, please feel free to check out the link in the description box below. And so we are in this one today because there are actually several pretty big changes for the 2024 Mirage, including Mitsubishi's new two years or 30,000 miles of complimentary maintenance program that's for all their Mitsubishi's, but of course Mirage being included in that. And this one actually starts at under $17,000 for the bottom term level. And we do have that bottom term level with us here today. So I'm gonna be showing you what you can actually get for under $17,000 these days. Do you also though get America's best warranty being five years, 60,000 mile bumper to bumper, 10 years, 100,000 miles on the powertrain. But if you actually were to get it at younger Mitsubishi, I'm just gonna give them this promo yet again. They will give you a 20 year, 200,000 mile powertrain warranty that is valid nationwide. So wanted to pitch that. But ultimately in this video, will we be testing out and going over everything about this one from acceleration to braking, steering feel, ride quality, sound system, exhaust clip, all that fun stuff. So having said all of that, what do you guys say? Let's just go ahead and jump right into it. And as always, let's start with the pricing. So as you can imagine, there are several different trim levels for the 2024 Mirage. First one being the ES starting at $16,695. That being the one we are in today. And by the way, that's a $450 bump from the 2023 model year, but still under 17,000. So I gotta love that. LE trim starts at 17,245 block edition or BE starting at 17,845. And lastly, the SE going for $18,595. But regardless of trim level that you go with, the power plant on the Mirage is going to be the same. Powering the little beast is a 1.2 liter naturally aspirated inline three cylinder, putting out 76 horsepower at 6,000 RPM, 74 power feet of torque coming in at 4,000 RPM. That power being sent to the front wheels through a continuously variable transmission, zero to 60 time coming in at approximately 12 seconds flat. We'll give it a little acceleration test a little bit later in the video, but MPG numbers get this, 36 in the city, 43 on the highway. And yes, that is better than this Chevy Spark and the Kia Rio as well. And of course taking regular unleaded fuel. So now I've got all of that out of the way. What do you guys say? Let's go ahead and find it straight away. Let's put the Mirage here to the test. Let me get my GoPro set up here and let's see how quickly we can get this one here. Speed. Here we go. All right, 20. We're going baby. 40. We're going 50. Hey, I have 55 stale out, that'll work. Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, you'll get used to it. I bet you you will get used to it. Now I don't own a Mirage, so I can't vouch for that, but with any vehicle, if you drive it enough, you're going to get used to it. You're going to know your limitations. And yeah, having said that, it's certainly not the quickest thing in the world, but it should get the job done. And keep in mind the trade-off is you get some pretty incredible miles per gallon in this thing. But anyways, to go along with that acceleration as always breaking is equally important. So upfront you will find nine inch ventilated front this and the back seven inch rear drum brakes. As far as that six easier stopping distance goes, that comes in at 127 feet, which is a pretty average number for an SUV. I will say that. So having said that, braking feel is definitely on the softer side of things. So it does feel like it takes a little more push to actually bring this thing to a stop. But having said that, it's not the heaviest vehicle out there. It's a pretty darn light vehicle. So it definitely does come to a stop, but that six easier number is not the best. And again, it is a soft braking feel.  As far as ride quality goes, it's actually, it hasn't been too bad. Now I will say in compact cars or even sub-compact cars like this, you do tend to feel a little bit more of the road. And maybe it's because I'm cruising over some ridiculously smooth roads right now in Hagerstown. But yeah, ride quality hasn't been all that bad. So I haven't had any issues there. As far as steering feel goes, it is a little bit more in the heavier side of things, which I personally kind of like. So that's not a bad thing in my opinion. So I personally don't have any issues with the steering feel. As far as cabin noise goes, it's kind of loud in here. I will say that. And that's to be expected. I remember driving this car in the past and especially the engine noise, I'll say that. This thing does get pretty rowdy when you really hit the gas like now. It does get kind of loud in here. And that's to be expected in a sub-compact, like the Mirage, but touching on visibility, I can see 100% perfectly fine out the back. So rear visibility is absolutely amazing. Probably one of the best out there, quite honestly. And get ready for a new feature for 2024 here. Rain-sensing windshield wipers now come standard on the LE trim level and up. And rain-sensing windshield wipers did not exist on the Mirage for the 2023 model year, but now you get it on the LE trim level and up. So that is one of the new features for 2024. But having said that, the Purdue Richard rounds out the performance segment of this review, guys. Let's now go ahead and take a look at the exterior of our brand new 2024 Mitsubishi Mirage. All right, so here she is, you guys. The new 2024 Mitsubishi Mirage finished in graphite gray metallic, which by the way is one of the two new colors for the 2024 Mirage.  So those are the two new colors if you wanted the latest and greatest. But as always, let's go ahead and start with where the Mirage is actually built. Taking a look at the Vin. First characters are ML. So I know I had to look this one up last year, but now I know ML means that this one is built and assembled in Thailand, TDM. So it actually says that on the window sticker as well, which is pretty cool. So made in Thailand. You don't see many vehicles here in the US that are made in Thailand. But anyways, let's go ahead and start up front. BE by the way, if I didn't say it already, I think I did sense for black edition, which adds black accents for all of the chrome accents that you guys are currently looking at up front here. So we did want to start by mentioning that that black edition trim also adds some red accents on the front grill for a little sport of your nature, I guess you could say. Halogen headlights do come standard then on all trim levels, but the SE, the SE trim is going to give you full LED headlights then. So both low beam and high beam. So I thought that was pretty darn cool. Automatic feature is going to come with the black edition and SE trims. And then automatic high beams is going to be found on the SE trim level only. So what that is is if you have your high beams on at night and it sets the vehicle coming in the opposite direction, it's going to automatically dim them, high beams back to low beams. Then when the vehicle is gone, it's going to automatically bounce it back up to high beams for you there. So pretty darn convenient feature there. And you guys can see down below those headlights there, there is kind of a cut out for fog lights. The fog lights are actually going to come on the SE trim level only. However, they are available on the LE trim, but that's what kind of that cut out is down below beneath the headlights, I should say so. Anyways, that pretty much rounds out the front of the Mirage, let's now go ahead and make our way to the side. All right, so now since we are around to the side of this one, black windows arounds do come standard. Body colored door handles also coming standard. I know it's a given on most vehicles, but on lower priced vehicles like the Mirage, that isn't always the case. So do want to mention that. Body colored folding side mirrors coming standard, you are going to find integrated turd signals on the SE trim level only with the gloss black finish, of course, on the black edition. But then one of my favorite parts, even without the turd signals being integrated into the side mirrors, one of my favorite parts about the side profile of the Mirage is these JDM turnt signal indicators found on the front fenders. So I'll give you guys some B-roll showing that in action real quick, but I love that that's something like the old Integra type Rs did in Japan and the Civic type Rs always used to do that in Japan. So that is a pretty cool little accent piece in my personal opinion. But then take it down to the wheel setup, 14 inch steel wheels with covers coming with our ES trim level. Of course, 14 inch alloys for the LE, 15 inch black alloys for the black edition, and then 15 inch silver alloys for the SE trim level. But that pretty much rounds out the side profile. Let's now go ahead and make our way to the back. All right, so now let's see around to the back of this one. Gotta love that black antenna found all the way to the top there. Just below that rear spoiler with the integrated brake light. Just below that rear window wiper. Of course, you have some, please subscribe to the channel and like the video lettering spelled out right there. And honestly guys, do subscribe if you haven't already. If you're new to the channel, I've been doing this for almost nine years now on YouTube, I cover all new cars when I see them come out if possible. So if you like new car videos, go ahead and hit the subscribe button. But anyways, in all seriousness, body colored rear diffuser down below, I always think that is pretty cool. And in terms of the exhaust outlet, it is a single exhaust, but there is a chrome tip on the LE trim level enough. But for our ES, we don't have any fancy exhaust finish on ours, but still having said that, I do believe you guys know what we have to do next as always here is that exhaust clip. I also announced this to you all around to the back of the Mirage when it comes to opening that rear lift gate. Of course, it is a manual lift gate for all trim levels across the board. Once opened up, cargo capacity comes in at 17.1 cubic feet. If that was not enough space, of course the re-seeds do fall down so you do get some extra space then if you needed it. There is a cargo light back there. There is a cargo cover that comes standard as well. There's a cargo net that is available. And then if you were to lift up underneath of that cargo floor, you are going to find a spare tire, which as always is what I prefer as opposed to the fix-a-flat. But so they're making our way up to the rear legroom that is going to come in at 34.2 inches for reference, I mean, even six feet tall. This is how much space I had back there. There is no center armrest. There is no rear charging ports and there's no rear ventilation. But with the size of this vehicle, I'm not sure you would actually need the rear ventilation anyways, but then making our way up to the front seats, manually adjustable cloth seating coming with all trim levels, but the SE, that SE trim level is going to add a cloth leather at kind of combo finish. And then you also get heated front seats actually with the SE as well. But overall as far as seat comfort goes, it's not the best. It's not the best because the seats aren't as adjustable as you traditionally find in just about all of the vehicles out there. So for a taller individual, it's not the best. I think if you were a shorter individual, probably wouldn't be all that bad. But here's why I say that because in terms of the steering wheel, let's go ahead and cover that real quick. It is tilt. It is not telescoping. So if you're six feet tall like myself and you have to put the seat back a little bit further to get a better driving position for your legs, a lot of times you want the steering wheel to come out to kind of match the leg length. And in this case, you can't telescope out the steering wheel. So for taller individuals, this vehicle might not be the best for shorter individuals, I don't know, five, six or less. You might be perfectly fine. But anyways, steering wheel is gonna be leather-wrapped for the SE. It's gonna be wrapped in urethane for all other trim levels. So then making our way up to the startup, let me start by showing you guys the key here. You got your Mitsubishi logo on the one side. When you flip it over, of course, lock and unlock, pretty basic key, but it is a turn key start for all trim levels, but the SE, that SE is going to give you a push button start. But in our case, all I'm going to do here is simply put my front of the brake and turn the key. And so once started up then, when it comes to the gauges, tachometer is all the way to your left, speedometer is front and center, and you got all your warning lights, of course, to the right, but it is kind of a throwback gauge cluster. It looks like it's from the 90s, like driving an old Integra or something like that, which for a lot of people isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's more reliable than maybe the digital gauge clusters that are out there right now. So for that reason, you might not personally mind it. But now let's go ahead and take a look at overall interior quality here. So SE trim level is going to give you basically all of the little creature comforts, I guess you could say.  But overall, you do get automatic climate control for all trim levels, meaning I set the temperature to 73. It's going to automatically hit that for me. So that is pretty cool. I like that. Just in front of the shifter, you got a little bit of storage. You got a USB charging port, a couple cup holders behind the shifter. You have your old school parking brake there. I like that. This little center console that I'm showing you guys here, this is an added option for I think a little over $200. That does not come standard on the ES. So I did want to emphasize that, but we do have it as an option. I will say I used it throughout my entire drive. It is definitely a necessity to have some kind of armrest here because last year when I drove the LE, there was no center armrest. But another change for the 2024 Mirage is the LE trim leveling up now does come with a driver's seat armrest. So I will say I've been doing this room for nine years now. I know the manufacturers do watch my videos from time to time. I think Mitsubishi may have seen that one and then added a center armrest just because I said so because I did gripe on that a little bit. So that is new for 2024. So that is pretty cool. Overall though, interior quality is definitely on the basic side. Another thing I would definitely change Mitsubishi if you're watching this one is the armrests for the doors. They are finished in plastic. Even if you added some type of a soft material like the base Corolla does or something like that, it wouldn't be as hard on your elbows if you're going for a long drive in this thing or something like that. So a little bit less plastic, at least on the armrest. That's all I'm saying. The doors are fine. You can leave them to keep priced down. But now let's go ahead and make our way to the infotainment screen here. You're gonna find a seven inch color touch screen display coming standard for all trim levels across the board. That's gonna give you Bluetooth and audio streaming but also Android Auto Apple CarPlay. So yes, if you have a smartphone you got free navigation on the Mirage because you have Android Auto Apple CarPlay. So I love that. Of course, you can check out your radio information up there as well. So when it comes to the sound system, there is one of them and then it comes standard for all trim levels. That's gonna be a four speaker sound system. So what do you guys say? Let's go ahead and turn on the radio. Let's see what we got playing today and let's test out the clarity of this one. When my tears and knees both fall to the... Hi, if I'm being honest, it a little more based than I expected actually. Clarity was not the best. I'm just gonna say that. More based than I expected for only having four speakers in this thing. And quite honestly, you shouldn't expect an eight or 10 speaker sound system in a vehicle the size of the Mirage because this isn't that big of a vehicle. You don't need a ton of speakers. So four speakers is okay. Honestly, wouldn't have minded if they maybe put the SE with six speakers or something like that just because it is a basic sound system. Clarity isn't the best but base was a little more than I expected. So that's good. Anyway, it's the last thing I wanna mention guys on that infutainment screen is when you do put the Mirage in reverse you will find a rear view camera coming standard for all trim levels across the board. So you gotta love that. Letting you know who or what is behind you which is always is going to lead us into safety. And so start front side side curtain airbags do come standard.  In the back you're gonna have latch AKA lower anchors to tether your children for the rear car seats, rear child door locks, heart pressure monitoring system but also coming standard forward collision mitigation system with pedestrian detection and hill start assist as well. And if you were to go with that SE trim level that is going to add on top of that a lane departure warning system. And so overall when it comes to my final thoughts here this is an extremely affordable vehicle. You get America's best warranty. You get a double power train warranty at younger new free maintenance program. That's new for 2024 as well. So that's gonna save you a little bit more money on top of this vehicle being super inexpensive already. You got this cool JDM turn signal indicators. That's something I personally love. As far as room for improvement goes obviously it's probably the slowest car available right now. So you gotta get used to that. Not that that's necessarily a deal breaker. It's just something you gotta get used to. The sound system is basic and the interior quality is basic. Specifically I want a little bit more cushion for my elbows on the doors. But anyways, let me know what you guys think in the mirage in the comments section below. And that is about it for this one you guys. Thank you so much for watching. Feel free to follow me on social media at the bottom of the screen if you wanna see what's coming next on the channel before it gets to YouTube. Be sure to hit the subscribe and the bell notification button if you're in a new car reviews that is what we do here on this channel after all. Do appreciate you guys watching more than you know when I will see you guys all in the next video. Stay gold.


Researcher's social sciences typically do empirical studies to make or support or refute causal claims. While running a regression analysis does not require that you understand much about causality, understanding what our causal claims are actually about is very useful in the long run because it allows you to evaluate when a particular research design or particular statistical analysis technique can provide valid evidence for causality. However, defining causality is not that straightforward and there are many different ways that we can define what causality actually means. In this video I will explain one of the most commonly used theories for causality, the counterfactual model. In a research methods course or a book about research methods you may have seen this kind of explanation for making causal claims. So we are supposed to demonstrate three different conditions, association, direction of influence and then elimination of rival explanations. We are also told that the best way to demonstrate the direction of influence empirically is to measure the cause before the effect and that there are two main ways of eliminating rival explanations. The randomized experiment where you have treatment and control and people are assigned to those groups randomly, one of the groups gets the treatment, one of them doesn't and then we compare the outcomes of those two different groups afterwards. And then we are also told that statistical modeling can be applied when we don't have an experimental design where we are simply doing a correlation study. Further we can have figures like that that demonstrate the logic of the golden standard experiment. So we have the other population of interest, we take a sample for that as I randomly in the treatment and control, one group receives the treatment, other one doesn't, then we measure something from both groups and we compare the outcome and that is our estimate of the causal effect. Now there are two important questions or two important issues about this model. So what is this actually based on? So how is it possible that we say that this difference is actually a valid estimate of the causal effect? And the second issue is that this model or this research design actually does not provide us a causal effect, but instead it gives us the average treatment effect. So why cannot we get an individual level causal effect, that's something that I will address next. But before we go into that we need to understand what causality is and why we need to define causality in some way to do research. This is addressed pretty well in this chapter by Hitchcock, which I've taken this small excerpt. And Hitchcock explains that there are basically two reasons why we need to define causality in a way that does not involve the term cause. So we need to have these ways of defining causality that does not require the concept of causality itself. And this is important for the practical reason that we cannot observe causality in action. So if we put an object made of wax outside in direct sunlight on a hot day it will melt, but we really cannot see. We know that the sun is causing the object to melt, but we cannot see the causality in action. We know that it is out there, it's sunny and the wax object is melting, but we really cannot observe that it's actually the sun causing the object to melt. So we cannot observe causality directly. Therefore, for empirical research purposes we need a way to define causality that does not require the sort of causality itself, but something that is actually observable. So we need an operational definition for causality. Then there is the metaphysical argument that if we can do away with causality as one of the principle things or the original lowest law of things in the world, then our description of the world is simpler, which is always better. So there are a few different main theories for causality. One of them is the regularity theory of causality, which basically means that if cause always precedes the effect, then we can say that there's a causal relationship. But that's problematic because it's possible that the effect would have occurred anyway, and to address that we have the counterfactual model for causality. So where does the idea and the term counterfactual come from? Let's take a look at the experiment again. So let's consider that we want to estimate the causal effect on an individual. So typically when you go to a doctor and the doctor describes your medication, you are not really interested in what is the average effect of that medication on people, but you are interested in knowing what is the effect that that medication has on me. And that is a question that experiment cannot answer directly. The reason is that the difference, the causal effect of a medication can be defined through the difference of these two what we'll call potential outcomes. So the idea of the potential outcomes framework or Rubin's potential outcomes framework, which is the term that's used for this model in some contexts, is that an individual has two options to go. Either the individual goes to the treatment group or the individual goes to the control group. And let's assume that the individual receives the treatment. So this is the actual outcome. So what is the health, for example, after the individual has taken a medication? And then we have the other potential outcome, which we call the counterfactual. So this is the outcome that could have happened, but did not. So this is counterfactual because we don't observe this outcome. And the causal effect with this model can be defined as the difference between what actually happened, what's the actual outcome compared to the counterfactual outcome, what would have happened if the person had not taken a medication. So for example, if I'm holding this remote here and I'm releasing my hand and causing the remote to drop, that we could say that the regularity theory says that if I open my hand, then the remote drops and that is enough for causality. For counterfactual model, we need to actually make two different claims. We have the regularity claim. I opened my hand, the remote dropped, and we also have the counterfactual claim. Had I not opened my hand, the remote would not have dropped. And that's the idea of a counterfactual argument. So how does this counterfactual model between comparing actual outcomes and counterfactual outcomes that we don't observe, how do we then actually operationalize this model? Because we cannot see the counterfactual. We cannot observe something that could have happened but did not. In practice, the counterfactual modeling approach is simply they don't try to estimate the individual causal effect because that is simply in most cases impossible. Rather, we are focusing on the average causal effect. So the idea of doing an experiment here is that, for example, an experimental design is that we have one group, let's say we have the treatment group, which is our actual outcome. We measure or estimate some effect for the actual group and then we construct kind of like an artificial outcome through research design and for the counterfactual. In the context of experiment, in a valid experiment, we can make an assumption that the control group is a pretty good counterfactual for the treatment group. In the case that the treatment group would not have received the treatment. So the treatment group is the actual outcome and the control group becomes the counterfactual outcome for the treatment group. And of course we can refine this reasoning and make these signs where we estimate the average effect of the treatment on the treated and so on. And then we compare the actual outcome and the counterfactual, estimated counterfactual, and then that gives us the estimate of the causal effect. This model works pretty well on paper, but it requires assumptions. So we need to assume that the control group is a valid counterfactual for the treatment group. And the important thing about these assumptions is that they must be defensible. So in the counterfactual model, because we cannot observe the counterfactual, we need to estimate it and then we need to make assumptions and also defend those assumptions to make the claim that our estimated counterfactual is actually a valid estimate. In practice, many of our statistical analysis techniques are compatible with this way of viewing causality.


Yeah, I don't really think I have to introduce you Max do I? But I try I'm happy for anything My fellow Austrian Max the guy who's trying to beat Facebook Yeah Pardon my French Okay How long have we been at it now? One and a half years two years more than two years what's that like how long have we been at it now if you've been at it Facebook generally Yeah, 2011 seven years soon seven years Whoops. I missed the beginning there It's a long story You all know what that means Yeah, somebody who does not know what that means Wow, I'm impressed or they just don't want to Basically there are three procedures we had a couple of we had like the first three years in Ireland Which we took back because the DPC there the authority didn't really want to do much of a job the cleaning woman left the job You said that And then there was actually the safe harbor case which I'm gonna talk about today which started in 2013 it's still pending right now in Irish courts It went all the way to Luxembourg to the court of justice back to Ireland and now back up to the court of justice So that's your didn't it and this ping pong and there is a class action We're actually Having at the court of justice right now, and we're waiting for the judgment on that To see if we can enforce privacy through class action. So yeah We're basically going through all the options of privacy enforcement to not just have stuff in the law But probably in practice at some point as well Isn't that nice when friends do the job for you? Let's have another big hand for Max shrimps giving you the privacy shield lipstick on a pig Thanks a lot for the invitation Sorry for anybody that has to translate me because I'm very fast at talking and Probably it's sometimes hard to understand people tell me I'll try to slow down But at the same time we have 30 minutes and I have to go through a lot of stuff basically I was asked to talk about privacy shield and We called it lipstick on a pig because it's the old safe harbor agreement a bit of a background story probably on that What is safe harbor and what was the whole story behind all of this? We did have the surveillance Slides that Snowden disclosed where we basically knew that a couple of the big IT companies Take part in a program that's called prism, which is a US surveillance system basically an interesting thing here Is that from a legal perspective? I'm a lawyer the big promise a lot of that was oftentimes conspiracy hard to prove in courts And if you want to bring a case you need to have very very solid evidence because if you're to claim and you have to prove Stuff so if you just walk around and say oh, there's a law and they couldn't they may it's not going to be good enough The interesting thing with the disclosures by Snowden were that we actually had slides We actually had evidence that made sense that we could actually present to a court And that was the only reason this whole case ever happened is because of Snowden Thanks for that by the way That was kind of the factual side that we knew that these companies basically forward data to us government and The interesting thing from a legal perspective is how legally that works in the US And there's oftentimes talk about US law and I just want to kind of summarize that real quick It's not a hundred percent precise, but it gives you an idea how the law in the US works It basically says that there needs to be a so-called electronic communication service provider So that's your Google Facebook and so on the interesting thing is these surveillance laws do not apply to an ordinary business to the you Know airline or something that sends data to the US We're actually very specific in the surveillance law on electronic communication service providers And they need to have what they call foreign intelligence information and that is very broad Wording that basically excludes anything that the US may be interested in for diplomatic reasons and so on so it's not very Specific it's not your terrorist or something. It's basically espionage and all of that as well And that's pretty much the two things you need under Pfizer and On top of that and all of the stuff that's below that line is then classified There's a so-called certification for one year now typically the US says yeah, there's legal process when we have surveillance There's some court involved, but what that court does the Pfizer court is that it certifies a surveillance program for a whole year It doesn't look at individual surveillance at the individual person that is actually surveilled It just certifies a program like upstream or prison for a whole year. That's all the court does It doesn't look at the individual case where data is actually pulled The whole idea of that is that there are so-called minimization and targeting procedures that basically filter out the US Persons so anybody that lives in the US or is a US citizen if you're European this whole Minimizing and targeting procedure doesn't apply to you so you're not protected on any any of that The reason for that is if you would have surveillance that goes as far as Pfizer does for US people You would actually violate the fourth amendment under the US Constitution So all of what the US does right now would be unconstitutional if they would do it on US citizens, but since Fundamental rights in the US doesn't apply to foreigners. They can do it with us And that's the whole idea of this whole minimization targeting procedures is to filter them out And then there is a so-called directive at a service provider It doesn't specifically saw a say in the law what it does and how it works But it's basically telling a service provider that there has to be some technical interface to pull the data That's the order that goes to an individual service provider saying you have to give us the data That's not done by the court. That's actually done by the US government that order The court actually just certifies the whole surveillance program once a year So if I'm not a little smiley down here, and I'm a Facebook customer And I have a conflict with Facebook Island my data actually goes straight to the servers for off Facebook Inc The US parent company and there are two ways that the data as far as we know yet But there could be legally more ways two ways where we're sure that Data is pulled that's basically upstream where they pull it on the cable and then there's prism where they could pull it from The service off the service provider Prism makes sense if you for example have it encrypted that way you can still pull it from the service if you can't get it through upstream Upstream is much broader both of that works under Pfizer upstream can possibly also go under work on the 12 triple 3 and executive order That's the two legal basis is for that And there are a couple of guidelines and stuff. I'm gonna touch later, but that's the legal basis And that's what we have to look at so there are a couple of things that are disputed that we don't know yet the exact technical Implementation the amount of data that's really pulled the review mechanisms that are internal because all of that is classified and we don't have any proof of it There's a lot of rumors a lot of hints, but not really anything that was solid now That was basically what Snowden disclosed and what was interesting to me were the reactions. We had Demonstrations we had the European Parliament doing resolutions the European Commission did a wonderful review Merkel was pissed about her phone and that was basically the reaction and We knew that this is not gonna go far So the idea was how can we make a legal case out of this? And that was the original safe harbor case at the court of justice and the strategic approach there was kind of interesting If you bring the case like that you have to be very strategic because you're gonna go against a big government And you have to find some point where you can hit without having a hundred lawyers scream back at you And you're kind of messed up But you need to find like the one little bit where you can actually pull in and where you can actually get stuff done So the interesting thing was that we actually have a situation of public private surveillance partnership We have the internet service providers that get the data and the government that pulls it from them So it's this combination of private and public that was interesting legally Then the interesting thing is in our case Facebook was subject to US law and EU law their headquartered in Ireland 84% of their users are operated out of Ireland So you can say it's an 84 percent European company So I guess they have to follow European law at the same time their mother companies in the US So they have to follow that loss at the same time and you law regulates third country transfers So if you have personal data in the European Union, you're not allowed to send it to any third country Unless you have some legal way to actually protect the data. So it's basically an export control on personal data And finally all this you law has to be interpreted under our fundamental rights treaties So that was interesting because even if one company sends data to another company You have all your fundamental rights applying in this transfer and this overall connection actually made this case possible Another feature of European law that was very interesting for us is that the definitions in European law are very broad So for example processing data already is just making data available So one thing in our whole legal strategy was just to never claim that I was actually surveilled by the NSA I was only saying my data has to be made available to the NSA by Facebook under US law And that is the interesting thing if you go very abstract in the case and you kind of try to Say the only thing I have to prove is that they have to make it available Not that they actually pulled my data Then you actually leave a lot out of the case that you couldn't possibly prove otherwise And that's the interesting thing because that's exactly the difference to US law There you typically have to prove all these these things that you cannot prove and therefore your case is going to go Over so the interesting thing is because European law is much broader in their definitions You could actually bring a case that you would never be able to bring in the US the other thing that was interesting for us is we basically compared prism to data retention and Said the surveillance under prism is just basically ten times as bad as data retention And if data retention was illegal in the European Union then prism has to be ten times as illegal Basically go through the different things to the court of justice was interested in a Fundamental thing I think that everybody has to understand to talk about these data transfer issues is we have a actually on the very Meta level we have a conflict of law situation here Basically European law says you need to have privacy on Facebook servers In very simple terms and US law says you have to have surveillance on the same on the same data And that is the fundamental conflict of all these cases We have basically a conflict of jurisdiction one country screams at Facebook say we need surveillance the other country screams At Facebook and says you can't do that and that is the fundamental clash that we actually have in this whole area It's very different than in the private sector in the private sector There's basically no general data production law in the US Europe has that and because there is no conflict There's simply a gap Companies in the US could actually fill that through self-certification So we have to separate between the private sector that we can fix and the government sector that we can only fix if we Change either European fundamental rights or US surveillance laws both is not overly likely right now What was the legal argument that we brought if my data goes over to Facebook this data can only leave the European Union That's this export control thing if there's so-called adequate protection in a third country and my legal argument was very simple You don't have to study law for that I was basically walking up to the court and said mass surveillance is not adequate protection full stop And So how did the procedure go down under safe harbor you could actually go to a private arbitration service called trustee and You had to file a complaint with them first So I filed a complaint but because you could only have 100 I think 250 characters at the most the only thing I could say is stop Facebook inks involvement in prism That was the legal argument I could possibly make in that small little box and they came back to me saying that trustee does not have any authority to address the Issue because a private company can hardly tell the NSA to stop what it's doing So the next place you got to go is the Irish data protection commissioner That's the Irish data protection commissioner. My most favorite slide of any presentation It's actually that's a supermarket and the little red the little blue door on the very right. That's the Irish DPC and The interesting thing with the Irish DPC. They now got a new office because that picture was in the media too much So they got a fancy office But at the time Billy Hawks their their main their their their head Was actually going on to national radio in Ireland and said I don't think it will come as much of a surprise that in fact US intelligence services do have access from US companies and it was amazing because he agreed on public radio that factually We're absolutely right and the big problem in any privacy case is to get the facts right the facts Always the big issue the law is kind of the smaller issue So he went on to national radio recorded saying all these facts are actually true We know that there are surveillance So that was the most important thing. That's the reason we also went with Ireland We also filed in Germany for example and there I think the authorities are still investigating case or something like that But he was stupid enough to walk out into public and say obviously there is all this surveillance He just felt that legally there is no problem. And so we appealed that to the Irish High Court That's that And had our hearing there and what basically happened in Ireland is that they approved all the facts and passed it on to the European Court of Justice, that's the highest court in the European Union and Because safe harbor and the validity of it was at stake. They had to refer to the Court of Justice At the Court of Justice, we actually had a very long one-day hearing it was really interesting to see how How the kind of detailed the knowledge was of the judges there? I was because that's oftentimes the problem in privacy cases is that the judges don't really know what all of this is and in this case We're actually really happy with the judges and and their understanding of it and and kind of a little side note I think it was funny A day before the hearing there were a couple of people texting me a thing from different member states texting me Guess who was just calling us? I was like, I don't know yeah It was ah someone from the US government was calling us that we should change our position because the member states can all Put their views before the court as well and apparently the US government has tried to push Tremendously the day before to change their positions But it was too late. Everybody was already on their plane So it was they couldn't do anything and at the hearing actually there was someone from the US mission And he approached me and I was like, hey, how are you doing and he was like, oh, you're the plaintiff I was like, yeah, you're the watchdog from the US nice to meet you and We're chatting and it was funny because I was like You know and do you still need any phone numbers to call around and tell people what to say in front of the court? Are you done doing that? And the fun thing is if you're a student you can say things like that that the diplomats are not allowed to say and And he actually agreed then and said yeah We had to kind of make sure that our position is is is heard But he said that they only found out about the hearing on Friday night Then there was the weekend then they only had Monday to intervene anymore Which was way too late and on Tuesday the actual hearing happened So they were simply too late to intervene anymore even though that hearing I think was on the webpage of the court of justice for three weeks So they have all their wonderful surveillance, but they don't even find out when the actual court date is happening So that was fun a really interesting thing happened to the court of justice as well the Judgment came out. I think only two weeks after the advocate general at the court of justice There's an advocate general that gives a general opinion about the case and then there is the actual judgment and typically that takes two or three months and We heard rumors that there's gonna be a judgment on I think October 6th And I was like this is crazy It's like two days two weeks or three weeks after the advocate general that never happens It's like totally exceptional and the rumor goes that the former President of the court of justice that retired on the 7th of October the day later Wanted to push that judgment out before he retires as I like his goodbye present So it was actually really interesting to see how apparently judges get very emotional about these privacy cases Which is very good news in the long run if we want to go to the court of justice in the future as well So what did the court of justice say it's actually had a very very bold judgment? It said two things first of all It said that massive aliens violates the essence of article 7 which is the right to privacy under the charter of fundamental rights And that they're the lack of legal redress So there's no court to go to and appeal anything while it's the essence of your article 47 rights which is your fair trial and I may know that this is only exciting to me Because I'm a lawyer, but in EU law there is so-called proportionality tests So you test how if a law is proportionate or not and if you have for example Data retention it may be somewhere in the disproportionate area or may be proportionate and so on However, you can have a violation of the essence which is kind of no way this is ever gonna be justifiable budget you hear No matter how many people you can save from being dead or whatever It's simply a violation of the essence so it's outside of even debating proportionality And our case was the first time where the court of justice found that there's a violation of the essence of any fundamental rights in this case the right to privacy so So obviously we argued that but if you're the court of justice and you get that judgment handed down Everybody's reading something and someone some other lawyer screamed out just like fuck. We got the essence and we're like strike So anyways, that's you know what your fun, but anyways The other stuff that was interesting was that they said that the third country has to have essentially equivalent protection as the European Union and that's interesting because I said before the law only talks about adequate protection and Adequate is not a legally really meaningful word adequate anything and nothing can be adequate so what actually happened in the law it said equivalent originally then it was lobbied out in the 90s to adequate because that means nothing and Now the court basically lobbied it back in into essential equivalent and basically put the law back of where it was they said that there had to be effective detection and supervision mechanisms and They also said that they have to be has to be legal redress in line with article 47 now This is very interesting because none of the European Union countries that has serious surveillance does any of the above and So they actually went very far in how it's like for example if I'm an Austrian citizen and I'm surveilled by the German services There is nothing like that in Germany where I could possibly appeal to How does that happen? The EU treaties have an exception for national security So anything that is in the national security area is exempt from EU law the member states never gave that part to the European Union So the court of justice can rule about national security of a third country because that's not exempt from EU law But it cannot rule about national security of our own member states, which is a totally absurd situation But that's the reason why basically the US and the Germany or France or so Gets along with it without really having a problem. I'm gonna get back to that later At least with the UK that is a thing that is solved by Brexit because then there's third country and we can bring a case there as well But you know you've got to look at the bright side of Brexit too So actually that's all the pre-story to get to the stuff I should actually talk about Which is privacy shield or a cold safe harbor 2.0 I usually call it safe harbor 1.0 point one or something like that because it's basically the same text What happened when safe harbor was kicked down is Basically that the US became like any other third country we transferred data to so it simply just lost the special status it had before through that treaty And there are still different possibilities to send data to the US So for example, you can use consent performance of a contract so called SEC standard contractual clauses binding copyright rules and so on So it's not like you couldn't send data to the US anymore It was just not that easy you had to use different legal mechanisms The Facebook actually switched to SCC's and we have a case right now pending in Ireland where the Irish data protection commissioner sued me and Facebook Over the standard contractual clauses. It's still the same complaint as the original case We're right now. We had about four weeks five weeks in courts in Dublin beginning of this year with about 20 solicitors and barristers We had about 45,000 pages produced in this case We're expect about five to ten million in cost for this legal battle for the second round where I got sued like I didn't start this The DPC started that and and there's gonna be a second reference. We're still fighting over what the question is So actually the whole case is gonna go back up to the court of justice a second time around just on another legal basis I can't really talk much about this case because it's a pending case But let's say Facebook totally fucked up in that procedure They had like all their wonderful experts with Thousands of pages and when it was before the court you just had to look at the footnotes and you're like guys You're actually saying this is in the footnote, but it's not there You just made it up and it was amazing to see how they have Incredibly well-paid lawyers, but they don't check their own stuff And it's it's really they just apparently they're so full of themselves that they think we're gonna get away with anything However, the judge didn't let him get away So the most important part to me is that actually that judgment that we had in the first round. That's already Kind of fixed so I can talk about it Actually again says that there's mass and indiscriminate processing by the US government So that is actually what they challenge where they say there is no mass surveillance and it says exactly that again So on the whole factual stuff they lost again Back that's kind of a little side story I'm Back to the actual privacy shield How did that thing actually happen? I think you need to understand the history of privacy shield to explain why it's bullshit on January 31st little fairy tale there was a deadline by the European data protection authorities and January 31st at night in New York Times reports That EU and US couldn't agree on any kind of new deal and I was talking to the reporter And he said he got that information in a way that he knows it's it's a hundred percent certain So apparently on the 31st the two sides stood up from the table from the table and said there's no agreement We can't agree on anything here anything here 48 hours later there was apparently a phone call between the US government and the European Commission and someone was told that you're about the responsible Commissioner should just get anything done and 48 hours later the same New York Times with the same reporter reports that there is now a new deal And and we didn't really know the name yet, but 24 hours later There was suddenly this logo and it was called privacy shield and I was talking to people that negotiated It was like how did he come up with this shitty name and he said I didn't know about the name until that actual press conference Because that deal didn't exist. It was simply a logo with a name and no actual deal We know that because one week later epic a US privacy NGO made a freedom of information request with the US government Asking for the actual text of that deal And they got a response. I think two days later Saying that they cannot have the the text because the record that you requested does not exist So one month later there was actually a text And it's basically save harbor again It's the same text most of it is one-on-one the same like if you would do a red line comparison of it Probably five percent would be new text all the rest is basically the same And they just put a new name on it call it a privacy shield and that's why I basically think it slips They got a pic What's the problem with privacy shield if that gets ever back to the court of justice? So basically the idea pig meets court How would that go down? Under what the the judgment by the court of justice there are two hurdles that privacy shield would have to overcome One hurdle is basically this essential equivalence which is important in the in the in the in the private sector And then it also has to be compliant with the charter fundamental rights, which is relevant for mass surveillance Just two three examples why this would not work Privacy shield still follows the so-called notice and choice principle in the US not consent not a legal basis to process data But notice and choice which is a very kind of Yeah, not very stringent system in a very simple graphic on The left all these types of data processing are covered on the EU law from collecting the data all the way to deleting it Anything you would do with data is covered by the law and you need a legal basis for that on the privacy shield You only need an up to provide an opt out So you don't even need to ask for consent any other legal basis You only have to provide for an opt out if you disclose data to someone else or if you change the purpose of the data processing So if you just compare these two things together, you can say oh, this is absolutely not essential equivalent Basically the one thing is teeny tiny protection and the other one is full protection If you compare that if you collect data use it store it all of that is not even covered You don't need any legal basis. You can just do it under privacy shield Only if you then disclose or change the purpose then you can actually you actually need to provide an opt out So you don't even have to have to ask for consent You just need to have some opt out box on some web page and no one finds And you can even kill these two things by simply putting a very broad purpose into your privacy policy saying we use the data For anything we want to use it So you will never have to change the purpose if it's that broad and you basically have a third-party clause where it says you can send the data to anybody else and Thereby you have basically unlimited data processing under privacy shield, which is should officially be the same thing as European Union law So it will not add up ever the other thing that was interesting was redress And I think that kind of displays quite well how this is never gonna work in practice because imagine I want to get a beef with Facebook for the 21st time and I write my funny little complaint to Facebook They have 45 days to send me a letter back saying fuck off and that's what they typically do then I can complain to trustee We already know them before that's the guys with the 2250 characters to complain about stuff They're actually chosen and paid for by Facebook, but they're officially independent So I can complain with them if my complaint is upheld They tell Facebook not to do stuff anymore, but it's not enforceable. It's basically an email to Facebook saying don't do this Anymore if they further do it. There is no consequence. There's no way they also don't have investigative power So they cannot figure out what Facebook actually does on its servers They can only look at whatever I bring up and I'm usually not able to gonna gonna be able to bring up much If I'm unhappy with that I can go to my national DPA in Europe And they can then raise the issue with the Department of Commerce in the US in an informal procedure again The Department of Commerce doesn't have any investigative powers So let's say I made an access request that I want to have a copy of all my data Facebook doesn't send anything back. None of these guys can actually find out what Facebook actually stores on their servers to then decide over my access request If I'm with the Irish DPC I first have to go to a court to sue them to actually do all of that because they would never do that anyways And all of them can theoretically go to the Federal Trade Commission Which again doesn't really have too much enforcement powers and not a lot of investigative powers, but definitely more than the others But the FTC already said they're not gonna do that if they don't like it and they haven't done that so far So basically all of that is all in gray because you don't get anywhere with all of this Now on top of all of that and you have to go through all the other things before before you can appeal to the so-called privacy shield Panel which is gonna be about 10 or 15 lawyers or something like that and you can call with you can have a Skype call basically with them a video conference and And talk with them over your privacy concern and even their decision is not going to be legally binding But you would then have to transfer that through an American court into a legally binding American decision and all of this is probably gonna take Three or four years to just get your fucking access requests So that is the enforcement mechanism of privacy shield which makes sure that even if you violate any of these rules that you can hardly Violate there is no way you will ever get your rights in the end The interesting thing here is also a question of fair competition now. We have people on the European market That can run under this system instead of really following The European rules and I think that's also an issue that our companies now have to follow GDPR all these fancy privacy laws We have and US companies don't The most interesting part actually of that whole privacy shield thing is the whole surveillance issue and the European Commission made a very interesting assessment and Had a press release when they put our privacy shield saying that you are so your authorities Assured that there is no indiscriminate or mass surveillance by national security authorities So we now know we're safe If you look into the privacy shield actually there is annex six page four that says that there is So-called box surveillance for six specific purposes So in the press release they said there is no mass surveillance, but now there is bulk surveillance in annex six page four And that is for a lot of physics purposes that are very broad for example The last one here is combating transnational criminal threats So you just need a crime that goes across a border and a threat of such a crime You don't even need a crime. So just the fact that Mexicans may throw Drugs over the border is such a trans criminal transnational criminal threat that already allows mass surveillance So if you look at the definitions, they're a huge really really broad however They say that this is the rule for box surveillance and there are only six purposes But the word bulk actually has a footnote five and Lawyers love footnote. So you follow that and if you follow that footnote They actually say that these limitations only apply if data is not temporary Temporarily acquired to later facilitate targeted surveillance. So The overall story is if I collect all the data in bulk first to later target someone within that bulk Then it's not mass surveillance and that is the interesting thing and that's basically where the definition goes differently The US basically has that view if you have an if you have your I don't know your browser And you just type in one URL you obviously only have access to one page at a time So your browser doesn't give you access to internet to the bulk of the whole internet But only to one page at a time. So therefore it's not bulk collection of data That's kind of the idea that they tried to put up and therefore you basically get out of the whole system Finally I'm kind of short with my time what they did is that because it would be impossible that the US said that the European Union would Put all of that into their own finding what they did is they basically got a letter from the US and annexed the letter From the US to the decision So what they basically did is they asked a foreign government to approve that their law is great Put that in a letter and annex it to European Union decision if you would do that with China you would basically ask China to give you a letter how great your The fundamental rights in China are you annexed that to a European Union decision and say obviously the law in China is great because the Chinese Government send us a letter saying it is and that's basically how they got around all these issues Very final issue that I want to bring up is that you can now complain to a so-called privacy shield on boots person that's not a court or anything but an onwards person in the US State Department so the foreign Department and That goes through the national DPA the fun part of all of it This is you the answer you will get from this redress mechanism And that's the only new redress mechanism in privacy shield is already Pre-described in privacy shield and the answer is going to be the same answer no matter what your case is and The answer will be first of all that it has been investigated Secondly, they will tell you that they either complied with the law or change their behavior They're not going to tell you if they complied with the law They only said either we complied with the law or we're going to change do that differently in the future And then they will neither confirm nor deny that there was any surveillance anyways And that is your wonderful redress that should apparently fulfill your right to redress on the European Union law I'm gonna jump through that Snowden was pissed about it as well. You can read that on Twitter yourself One last thing that I want to talk about is how to kill privacy shield because if anybody in this room wants to kill it There's a very easy way to do that and I'm encouraging anybody to do that You can basically file an injunction against an internet service provider at your local European court and basically claim the privacy shield It's invalid and request a reference to a court of justice because your local court will have to refer a case like that to the court of justice And then you can basically focus on the commercial things because that's much easier to challenge than the mass surveillance And then you basically just have to sit back and relax. So if anybody in this room wants to go to the court of justice I'm happily assisting you and Finally, I need to jump to the very last part because We're right now That's the part about use of European surveillance. I told you that already. There's actually a way to probably get these courses There is no jurisdiction for mass surveillance in Europe by the court of justice Luxembourg But there is a possibility to bring the same cases with the same legal rationale to Strasburg and we already had the first case going up where they cited our case So I think for European surveillance this whole case was very important as well But we're just gonna need a different court to go to the very last thing Sorry, but I have to pitch something We just started a privacy enforcement NGO We're looking for donations on that actually for memberships because I do all of this for free But to do cases like that and actually win stuff We need to have a team on a European level that does shit like that Especially we're looking into the commercial sector. We are working together with the NGOs that already exist nationally But the idea is to really do stuff on the European level Very quick pitch because I'm over my time Questions, please ask me personally because we're over time anyway. Sorry Okay, thank you max