On 7 May, President of Latvia Egils Levits addressed the participants of the annual international conference ‘The Riga StratCom Dialogue 2021’ online.
President of Latvia welcomed participants and thanked the Riga-based NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence for inviting him to the conference together with such prominent experts who ensure that the conference remains a high-profile event from year to year. President praised the NATO StratCom COE for choosing to focus public attention on democratic development in the age of information and communication technologies (ICT) during this year’ s conference.
In his speech, President specifically stressed that technological progress should be determined by democratic principles and values, and not vice-versa. Moreover, we should not let technologies become our masters, and makers of our destiny. Societies are exposed to rapid technological expansion on everyday basis. We surely welcome this development, but, as President Levits underlined, we must also be aware of the threats it brings along. Threats that stem from uncontrolled technological expansion.
President then zeroed in on current democratic challenges that are directly linked to ICT age: COVID-19 pandemic, growing information-space dominance of social media, intensifying disinformation, online freedom of speech restrictions.
A large part of President Levits address focused on freedom of speech. He strongly reminded that ‘freedom of speech is fundamental to democracy and mankind, and it cannot be restricted’. It is, of course, unacceptable to use freedom of speech for inciting hatred and false narratives. Each country has a different democratic context, and limits of free speech should be determined only by democratically elected legislature and rule of law, and not some anonymous complainer or pre-programmed algorithm, President also added. Both - in physical and virtual domain. ‘Having experienced totalitarian occupation, Latvia will always side with free speech and human rights, not censorship,’ President concluded.