The Tech Brief EURACTIV

Tornado Cash co-founder Alexey Pertsev was sentenced to a little over five months in jail this week by a Dutch court, for helping to create a tool that obfuscates the trail of cryptocurrencies. The tool, built and run on Ethereum blockchain, was used by hackers to launder their illicitly obtained funds.
The defense argued that this was a decentralized, open-source tool, and that they had little control over its use to launder millions, possibly billions of funds by criminals.
We are joined by David Carlisle, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at blockchain analytics firm Elliptic and author of “The Crypto Launderers: Crime and Cryptocurrencies from the Dark Web to DeFi and Beyond,” to discuss what this case means for developers and the crypto ecosystem overall.

Following the EU and NATO  condemning Russian cyber espionage group APT28 last week, we talked to independent cyber policy expert Pavlina Pavlova about APT28’s methods, the EU’s response, and what the possible next steps are.

This week, we are discussing the artificial intelligence liability directive (AILD), a key part of the EU's continuously evolving digital rulebook. The AILD is expected to fill an important legislative gap that will allow consumers to seek compensation for damages caused by AI products.
We are joined by Beatrice Schütte, postdoc researcher at the University of Helsinki and the University of Lapland, and Shu Li, Assistant Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

This week, together with Andrea Renda, Senior Research Fellow and Head of the CEPS Unit on Global Governance, Regulation, Innovation and the Digital Economy, we break down the Letta report's key technological insights, what is missing from the document, and what to anticipate from the report by Mario Draghi.

Enrico Letta, a former Italian Prime Minister, whom European leaders asked to write a report on the state of the EU’s single market, published his findings last week, while former president of the European Investment Bank Mario Draghi's report is expected to be published at the end of June.

Last week, the EU Parliament voted to pass amendments to Eurodac, previously a fingerprints database, along with a new Migration Pact to boost border security.
The expansion of Eurodac will see migrants’ biometric data, including facial images, collected and stored for 10 years and exchanged between police and border authorities.
This includes children as young as six years old.On today’s podcast, rapporteur for the file, MEP Jorge Buxade Villalba said why he thinks regulation is necessary — and why he thinks it has been vilified be NGOs. In a separate interview, AccesNow’s Caterina Rodelli, said on why she thinks the Eurodac entails mass surveillance for migrants and asylum seekers — and why she that’s a bad thing.

This week we talk to Max von Thun, Europe Director at the Open Markets Institute about competition policy.Amid a barrage of measures and investigations on digital competition in recent weeks, the think tank co-authored a manifesto calling for a revamp of competition policy, including structural changes within the Commission.
Crucial to those is a change in culture within the executive, but is it tenable?