Ahmed, Melford, bretonAnd their respective organizations They also made their own statements condemning the entry restrictions. Ahmed, the only one of the five based in the United States, also successfully filed a lawsuit To prevent any efforts to detain him, which the State Department had indicated it would consider doing.
But along with statements of solidarity, Ballon and von Hodenberg said, they also received more practical advice: Recognize that the travel ban was just the beginning and that there could be more consequences. Service providers may already be revoking access to their online accounts; Banks may restrict their access to money or global payment systems; They may notice malicious attempts to take over their or their customers’ personal data. Perhaps, colleagues told him, he should even consider transferring his money to friends’ accounts or keeping cash on hand so he could pay his team salaries — and buy groceries for his family.
These warnings seem especially urgent, given that just days earlier, the Trump administration Accepted Two judges of the International Criminal Court for “illegally targeting Israel”. As a result, they had lost Access to multiple US tech platforms including Microsoft, Amazon and Gmail.
“If Microsoft did this to someone who is much more important than us, they wouldn’t even blink an eye to shut down the email accounts of some random human rights organizations in Germany,” Ballen told me.
“There is a dark cloud hanging over us now that something could happen at any moment,” von Hodenberg said. “We are racing against time to take the appropriate steps.”
Helping navigate the “messy place”
Founded in 2018 to support people experiencing digital violence, HateAid has since evolved to defend digital rights more broadly. It provides ways for people to report illegal online content and provides victims with advice, digital safety, emotional support and help with evidence preservation. It also educates German police, prosecutors and politicians about how to deal with online hate crimes.
Once the group is contacted for help, and if its attorneys determine that the type of harassment being harassed violates the law, the organization connects victims with legal counsel who can help them file civil and criminal lawsuits against perpetrators, and, if necessary, help finance cases. (HateAid itself does not file cases against individuals.) Ballon and von Hodenberg estimate that HateAid has worked with about 7,500 victims and helped them file 700 criminal cases and 300 civil cases, mostly against individual perpetrators.
For Theresia Kron, a 23-year-old German law student and outspoken political activist, HateAid’s support means she has been able to regain some sense of agency in her life, both on and offline. She reached out to him after discovering entire online forums dedicated to his creating deepfakes. Without HateEd, she told me, “I would have either had to rely on the police and the government attorney to properly prosecute this, or I would have had to foot a lawyer’s bill myself”—a huge financial burden for “a student with basically no fixed income.”
