Germany’s Use of Artificial Intelligence to Police the Internet: The Case of Alexander Wallasch

This is the third and last part of my interview with German attorney Dirk Schmitz.

We’re discussing in detail the case of independent journalist Alexander Wallasch. In February 2025, Alexander received a threatening letter from one of Germany’s state media authorities. The letter ordered him to “improve” within 4(!) weeks the thousands of articles he had written over several years - or face the potential shutdown of his entire news platform.

The letter wasn’t signed by a person. Instead it said: “Your Team Regulation.” Dirk Schmitz: “I call it ‘Your Team Censorship.’”

The case of Alexander Wallasch is not an exception - there are hundreds of other cases if not more. And it’s quick and easy to create lots of such cases because Germany started using artificial intelligence to police the internet. All German state media authorities use an AI crawler called ‘KIVI.’ (By the way, ‘KI’ in German is the acronym for AI. KIVI stands for ‘Artificial Intelligence Vigilance’ - don’t they come up with fun names?)

KIVI crawls daily through the entire internet and flags what it has been taught to regard as suspicious content - which could be anything that is not aligned with the twisted thoughts of Germany’s ruling elite. Schmitz: “And if there is any chance that these contributions, reposting and likes might possibly be a punishable crime, they will systematically be forwarded by the state media authorities to German state prosecutors, which means to law enforcement agencies.”

The state media authority of Lower Saxony accused Wallasch of not fulfilling his “journalistic due diligence” duties despite the fact that such a thing as journalistic due diligence is not a term defined in German law and nobody can be prosecuted in Germany for lack of “journalistic due diligence.”

Attorney Schmitz, Wallasch’s lawyer, says: “There's no state-verifiable and enforceable claim to due diligence…. The State Media Authority claims that if I write an article, then I have to cite sources. Bullshit, an article is not a doctoral thesis. If I write a doctoral thesis, I have to cite sources, there are footnotes. But in an article, I can claim all sorts of things, I can even mix opinions and facts. I can say all sorts of things. The natural limit of expressing opinions—and expressing opinions in media is a subset of expressing opinions—is that if I defame someone, they can sue me.”

Alexander Wallasch’s articles naturally aroused KIVI’s interest since he’s an independent and original thinker with libertarian and conservative leanings.

KIVI dredges up so much content that the state officials at the state media authorities let it run only one hour per day - they cannot deal with more. But this bottleneck will disappear as soon as the analysis of the flagged content will also be done by artificial intelligence. Which is what Germany is working on with full speed. Schmitz says: “And currently a lot of government funding is dumped into creating an AI system that would function like a ChatGPT for analysis of flagged content. That's the next step. And once that’s achieved, total surveillance of the internet in Germany will be complete.”

CHAPTERS
00:00 Alexander Wallasch’s Independent Media Platform Is Threatened With Shutdown
00:56 Dirk Schmitz Explains What German State Media Authorities Are
03:55 What Is ‘Journalistic Due Diligence’?
07:42 KIVI: Germany’s AI Internet Surveillance And Censorship System
13:29 How Does KIVI Work? It Crawls Through The Internet And Flags ‘Problematic’ Content
15:24 Donald Trump Would Be Banned In Germany For Political Extremism By The Federal Office For The Constitution
16:00 KIVI Flags Content But It Cannot Yet Analyze And Decide Whom To Threaten - But That Will Be Done By AI Too In The Near Future
17:27 East Germany: What Was It And Was It A Democratic Republic?
19:10 Where In Germany Does The AfD (Alternative For Germany) Has The Most Support?
19:59 Why Is The AfD Regarded As A Threat By The Other Parties And The German Elite?
22:25 Systematic Impoverishment Of The German Population
23:40 The German State’s ‘Front Organizations’
24:38 ‘trusted Flaggers’ Of The Digital Services Act (DAS) Are Front Organizations Of The State
26:06 Front Organizations Do The Dirty Work For The State That The State Isn’t Allowed To Do According To The German Constitution
28:12 The State Media Authority’s Threats Against Alexander Wallasch Serve The Purpose Of Intimidating Him
29:14 Unequal Application Of The Law In Germany: Oppositional Voices Are Targeted
30:13 Hundreds Of People Received Such Threat Letters Like Wallasch Did: His Case Is Not An Isolated Case
31:31 Attorney Schmitz Advises Germans To Purchase Legal Protection Insurance
33:45 The Threat Letter Against Wallasch Received A Lot Of Attention Among Independent And Conservative Media In The German Speaking World (Switzerland, Austria, Germany)
34:32 Why Americans Are So Attuned To The Topic Of Censorship

RESOURCES
https://www.alexander-wallasch.de/