Month: March 2020

Romania’s State of Emergency Raises Media Freedom Concerns

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The Centre for Independent Journalism, CJI, an NGO that promotes media freedom and good practices in journalism, has raised concern that provisions enacted as part of the state of emergency to combat the spread of the coronavirus in Romania could hamper journalists’ ability to inform the public.

“The most worrying aspect of all this is, from my perspective, the limitations to the access to information of public interest,” Cristina Lupu, executive director of the CJI, told BIRN.

“The lack of transparency of the authorities is a very bad sign and the biggest problem our media is confronting now,” said Lupu, adding that this has negative consequences for the public “who don’t have access to information on time”.

Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis declared a state of emergency across the country on March 16.

The measure, which will be in force for 30 days and can be extended with the approval of parliament, has raised concerns that it might be used to keep information secret.

One of its provisions gives the government power to remove from the public arena information considered to be false, a prerogative that authorities have used in at least three time since March 16.

Although the news sites and articles that were targeted were clearly false, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE, warned on Monday about the emergency powers “the removal of reports and entire websites, without providing appeal or redress mechanisms”.

“I share the preoccupation of the Romanian authorities to combat the dissemination of false information related to the health crisis,” the OSCE’s media freedom representative, Harlem Desir, said in a statement.

“However, at the same time, I want to recall the importance of ensuring the free flow of information, which is a key component for providing the public with information on the vital measures needed to contain the virus, as well as the respect for the right of the media to report on the pandemic and governmental policies,” he added.

The OSCE warned of the risk posed by the fact that the government can decide what is fake news and what is legitimate reporting, and that the special extended powers granted under the state of emergency could be used to unduly restrict the work of journalists.

The CJI has started a project called The Newsroom Diary to allow journalists to air “frustrations” about working under the state of emergency.

The lack of responses from official institutions is one of the most common challenges reported in the diary, which is published daily on the CIJ Facebook page. The time in which institutions are obliged to answer requests from journalists has doubled under the state of emergency.

Battling Coronavirus, Moldova Targets Unwanted Media ‘Opinion’

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A short-lived order for media in Moldova to refrain from printing or broadcasting ‘opinion’ and to convey only the position of authorities during a state of emergency imposed to aid the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic has set alarm bells ringing in the former Soviet republic.

The decree was issued on March 24 by Dragos Vicol, president of Moldova’s Audiovisual Council, CCA, the country’s chief media regulatory body, but it was met with a storm of criticism from journalists and media associations.

“Journalists will unilaterally renounce formulating their own opinion or other arbitrary opinions in reflecting on topics concerning the COVID-19 pandemic,” the order read.

The following day, Vicol tried to defend the order, saying it referred only to “unqualified opinion”. The media, he told the TVR broadcaster, should get their information from the World Health Organisation, WHO-approved sites, the government and the health ministry, “not from persons who bear no responsibility.”

His order followed weeks of government criticism of the way Moldovan media have been covering the unfolding crisis, with pro-Russian President Igor Dodon, Prime Minister Ion Chicu and Health Minister Viorica Dumbraveanu repeatedly accusing journalists of printing unverified information and spreading panic.

On March 23, Dodon said Moldovan media were trying “to make a show” of the health situation in Moldova, Europe’s poorest state.

Chicu, the PM, initially endorsed Vicol’s order, while stressing the authorities had no intention of restricting the freedom of the press.


The President of Moldova Igor Dodon (C) speaks with Prime Minister Ion Chicu (R) and Parliament Speaker Zinaida Greceanii (L) about the Coronavirus threat and the measures taken to stop its spread in Moldova. Photo: EPA/Doru Dumitru

But media NGOs and associations were unbowed, and launched a petition calling for the order to be withdrawn. The authorities are concealing information from the public, the director of the Independent Press Association, Petru Macovei, told BIRN, “This is why people need to be informed because quality information is an important point in tackling the pandemic.”

Dodon, who will bid for a second term in an election set for November, eventually distanced himself from the decree. Vicol rescinded it on March 26 “to calm spirits in the society,” but its main provisions will still be discussed during an upcoming session of the CCA.

‘Dangerous precedent’

Regardless of Dodon’s U-turn, media experts said it was unlikely Vicol acted of his accord in issuing the order in the first place.

“I believe that Vicol’s decision was requested by the authorities,” said Cornelia Cozonac, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in Chisinau.

Primul in Moldova rebroadcasts content from Russia’s state-owned Channel One.

Vicol’s order stressed that foreign broadcasters in Moldova must also obey the new rules, citing in particular the broadcasting regulator in Romania’s Moldova’s western neighbour and a member of the European Union. It made no mention of the Russian media outlets which hold a large share of the Moldovan market.

 

Aneta Gonta, director of the School of Advanced Journalism Studies in Chisinau, said Vicol’s order should be seen in the context of the pandemic and as “a call for media responsibility and compliance with the law, but also with the Code of Ethics.”

 

But its ban on ‘opinion’, she said, was offensive to medical professionals and others who may have something constructive to say on the issue.

 

Ion Manole, director of the Chisinau-based human rights NGO Promo-LEX, said the pandemic presented the authorities with a powerful temptation to censor the media.

 

“I hope that with this failed attempt such steps will no longer be recorded,” Manole said. “We have a society that has already tasted democracy and I think it will not easily give up on this freedom so hard won in recent years.”

Romania: From ‘Hackerville’ to Cybersecurity Powerhouse

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First there was Guccifer, real name Marcel Lazar Lehel, who hacked the email accounts of the Bush family in the United States; then came Hackerville, the moniker given to the town of Ramnicu Sarat due to the international cybergangs it was home to.

Fairly or not, hackers put Romania on the global online map, honing their skills to strike Internet users and companies in the West, particularly the US.

But today, 30 years since the fall of communism, IT and cybersecurity firms are looking to tap the same rich vein of ambition, ingenuity and education that made Romanian hackers so feared and famous.

“Romania is currently one of the largest pools of talent in the IT&C space,” said Bogdan Botezatu, senior e-threats analyst at Romanian antivirus and cybersecurity giant Bitdefender. 

“Based on our tradition in STAMP [Software Testing Amplification] and research, universities deliver engineers, reverse engineers, people who are highly skilled in IT.”

Romania, he said, is already internationally recognised in the field of cybersecurity, and has the potential to play an even greater role.

Made in Romania – a global leader in cybersecurity

Bitdefender is one of the global leaders in cybersecurity, with more than 500 million customers worldwide and a network of research labs in Romania – the largest such network in Europe – to combat online threats.

Some 40 per cent of the antivirus and digital security companies on the market currently use at least one technology developed by Bitdefender. Such success is unparalleled in Romania, a European Union member state where almost no other company has a significant international footprint.

From Bucharest and other Romanian cities, Bitdefender’s experts have led or participated in operations to halt some of the most damaging cyber attacks the world has seen in recent years. 

In 2018, Bitdefender partnered with Europol, Interpol, the FBI and police in a number of EU countries to take down a group of hackers – believed to be from Russia – behind a ransomware called GandCrab. The inventors of the malware sold it on to other hackers who used it against private and corporate users.


View of the Bitdefender’s central headquarters in Bucharest. Photo: BIRN

“It became such a large phenomenon that half of the ransomware attacks happening at that moment were caused by GandCrab,” Botezatu told BIRN. 

“We managed to decrypt [the computers of] 60,000 victims, saving the victims around 70 million dollars.”

Despite its unusual level of sophistication, GandCrab was created as a way for the private individuals behind it to steal other people’s money.

Another type of cyberthreat, however, is state-sponsored and is known among experts as Advanced Persistent Threats, or APTs. 

The goal in this case is to undermine the functioning of key strategic foreign infrastructures or steal secret information from other states. That was the purpose of NotPetya, or GoldenEye, which emerged in 2017 as the work of hackers suspected to have been working for the Kremlin.

These hackers infected the update servers of an accountancy product widely used in the Ukrainian state administration. Everytime a Ukrainian public servant updated the program, the virus entered his or her computer and encrypted all its files. 

The virus had a worm component and quickly contaminated the entire networks to which infected computers were connected, bringing, for example, the Kiev metro to a halt and shutting down at least one airport, several banks and the radiation monitoring system at Chernobyl.

It spread globally, including to Romania, where Bitdefender took charge of the preliminary investigation that led to the identification of the virus after its researchers identified a pattern in the threats suffered by many users of their antivirus products. 

‘You can’t trace them back’

Like the rest of the former Soviet bloc, Romania spent more than four decades under communism, when education placed a premium on scientific and technological training. 

That expertise – and a resourcefulness developed under communism and during the painful transition to capitalism and democracy after 1989 – is now at the disposal of the EU and NATO as they try to combat cyber threats from Russia and other countries vying for a geopolitical upper hand.

And the Romanian state is doing its bit too, via bodies like the Romanian Information Service, SRI, an intelligence agency that took part in investigations that led to the 2018 exposure of Russian state involvement in a cyber espionage and warfare group called Fancy Bear. 

Also known as Sofacy or APT28, Fancy Bear targeted governments and civil society organisations in countries including the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, Romania and the US.


Bogdan Botezatu from Bitdefender. Photo: BIRN

Botezatu said the fact that the infections happened between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Moscow Standard Time led investigators to conclude they were being launched from government offices, said Botezatu of Bitdefender, which uncovered the campaign in 2015.

“Behind these kinds of attacks there is a country, and particularly the intelligence community of that country,” said General Anton Rog, head of SRI’s Cyberint centre.

“Of course, governments don’t act directly; through their intelligence services, they infiltrate or create these cybercrimes groups in a way that you can’t trace them back to say that they work with an information service.”

Most APT attacks, Rog told BIRN, are mounted in order to steal sensitive information. “It is a modality of espionage,” he said, “but through cables and cybernetic tools.” 

SRI’s Cyberint centre relies on tip-offs from foreign agencies, technology that recognises abnormal online activity and cyber informers.

Hybrid attacks

Sometimes the dividing line between financial-motivated attacks and APTs becomes blurred, as in the case of the malware family known as Cobalt Strike.

Cobalt Strike was used by the so-called Carbanak group from Russia and Ukraine to extract more than one billion euros from around 100 banks in over 40 countries, including Romania.

“The technology used is [characteristic of an] APT, but the motivation is strictly financial,” said Botezatu. 

Bitdefender conducted ‘post-mortems’ at two of the affected banks. Botezatu said the malware was “extremely sophisticated”, managing even to access the banks’ payment systems.

“With that level of access, the nefarious individuals authorise fraudulent bank transfers, raise the balance of mule accounts or command affected ATMs to spit out the money for them,” Europol said in a statement on the arrest in Spain of alleged Carbanak leader ‘Denis K’ in a 2018 operation that Romania took part in.

“Our suspicion is that… these attacks are used to make money to sponsor strategic attacks,” said SRI’s Rog. “In our evaluation, we take into account the fact that these groups have members who are in contact with governments or information communities,” he told BIRN, noting the costs and human and technical resources needed to develop malware like Cobalt Strike.

“They [governments] don’t want to spend money from their budget, they want to steal money from other countries and sponsor strategic attacks with it,” Rog said.

Strong cybersecurity “ecosystem”

To strengthen security at home and boost Romania’s role in the global cybersecurity game, SRI’s Cyberint centre says it is trying to create “an ecosystem” already being nurtured by courses offered by Cyberint at several universities across the country.

Likewise, Bitdefender partners with universities and high schools in training the next generation.

They may be people like Alexandru Coltuneac, a White Hat Hacker so called because of his transition from developing an Internet virus as a teenager to using his self-taught skills to help giants like Google, Facebook, PayPal, Microsoft and Adobe test their product security.

“I have set myself a target,” Coltuneac told BIRN. “I want to find at least one vulnerability in a product of each big company.”

Coltuneac, who is one of a number of Romanian White Hat Hackers recognised by Google and other companies as stars of ‘bug hunting’, now runs his own company together with a colleague.

Called LooseByte, the firm offers businesses cybersecurity tests and services to improve their protection levels.

Coltuneac said he finds pleasure in outsmarting the world’s best professionals.

“It’s a way of doing hacking without harming anyone,” he said.

Hungarian Coronavirus Bill Will Have “Chilling Effect” on Media

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Rights groups warn that legislation submitted to the Hungarian parliament, giving the government of Viktor Orban unprecedented power of decree in the fight against COVID-19, would have a “chilling effect” on independent media in the country.

The ‘Bill on Protection against Coronavirus’ was submitted by Orban’s government with the justification that it must be free to act without consulting parliament to confront a virus that has so far, officially, infected at least 261 people in Hungary.

The bill submitted last week amends rules under a state of emergency to give the government the power to rule by decree and suspend any existing law. It would permanently amend the criminal law to introduce punishment of one to five years in prison for anyone convicted of spreading “falsehood” or “distorted truth” deemed to obstruct efforts to combat the pandemic.

No elections or referenda can be held for the duration of the state of emergency and only the government or a two-thirds majority in parliament can lift it. Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party holds such a supermajority.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, HCLU, an NGO, warned of a devastating effect on Hungarian media after years of Fidesz rule during which right groups say the government has dismantled media freedoms and pluralism.  

“Once the legislation enters into force, it could have a chilling effect, and its timing and social context could lead to self-censorship among journalists,” the group said.

The way the bill is worded means someone could be prosecuted for ‘obstructing’ any number of government measures – from healthcare to education, border control and the economy – justified by the fight against COVID-19.

HCLU cautioned in particular that the term ‘distorted’ could be interpreted in a range of ways by the courts and “could be applicable even to someone who disputes the credibility of official statements.” Entire outlets face being shut down if police seize servers as evidence.

‘Dictatorial powers’

Media pluralism has been in decline for years in Hungary, with pro-government outlets now dominating the media landscape.

“Orban’s terrible track record on press freedom creates the suspicion that the law is aimed at the last remnants of an independent press in Hungary,” Kim Lane Scheppele, an expert on authoritarian regimes at Princeton University, wrote on March 21.

The bill would give Orban “dictatorial powers”, she wrote, and “end the appearance of constitutional and democratic government.”

On Monday, the opposition in parliament blocked a government move to pass the bill in an urgent procedure, but Fidesz is expected to push it through next week using its two-thirds supermajority.

A spokesman for the European Commission declined to comment on the bill directly, but noted that “all emergency measures should be temporary in nature and address a particular crisis situation.”

“Democracy cannot work without free and independent media,” said the spokesman, Christian Wigand. “In times of crisis it is more important than ever that journalists can do their job properly, precisely so to avoid disinformation.”

The European Parliament also expressed concern.

Any extraordinary measures during a pandemic “should always ensure that fundamental rights, rule of law and democratic principles are protected,” Juan Fernando López Aguilar, chair of the parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee, said in a statement.

Aguilar called on the Commission to look at whether the bill “complies with the values enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union and to remind member states of their responsibility to respect and protect these common values.”

In a letter to Orban, Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric said that an indefinite and uncontrolled state of emergency “cannot guarantee that the basic principles of democracy will be observed and that the emergency measures restricting fundamental human rights are strictly proportionate to the threat which they are supposed to counter.”

“…democratic debate in national parliaments, in the media and the internet, as well as access to official information and documents are essential elements of any free and democratic order and of particular importance in crisis situations to maintain trust and confidence within society,” she wrote.

Concern for Rights in Montenegro amid COVID-19 Fight

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Rights groups in Montenegro are warning of a threat to data privacy rights, free speech and media freedoms in the former Yugoslav republic under cover of the government’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Montenegro, a country of some 630,000 people, has at least 29 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and one death. Since the outbreak, police have stepped up action against those accused of spreading false information and, ignoring the protests of opposition and rights organisations, published the names of people required to self-isolate due to the virus.

The country, which has been run by the same party for the past three decades, has a long record of restricting human rights and violating data privacy rights.

Activists fear the government will exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to clamp down further. The government says its overriding priority is to protect the lives and health of Montenegrin citizens.

“I am afraid that an attempt to deal with one danger could create another danger,” said Daliborka Uljarevic, executive director of the Podgorica-based Centre for Civic Education.ducation.

Dozens arrested

On March 13, a court imposed 30 days custody for a Montenegrin man who wrote on Facebook that state officials were concealing the true extent of the pandemic.

On March 22, another man was arrested on suspicion of falsely claiming that he had been infected.

The next day, police announced that 60 people had been charged with violating the restrictions imposed by the government to combat the spread of COVID-19, including those accused of spreading ‘fake news’ and others who opened restaurants after the government ordered them closed.

The same day, in the coastal town of Kotor, a Russian citizen was arrested after she wrote on Instagram that around 1,000 people had been infected by the virus in Montenegro and that six people had died of complications.

Authorities have used such tactics before, arresting two NGO activists in January over their Facebook posts during protests organised by the Serbian Orthodox Church against a controversial freedom of religion law. Three journalists were also detained on suspicion of causing panic and public disorder in their writing.

Concern over government respect for law

Uljarevic said the government had performed well so far in combating the virus, but that it should work more closely with all social and political actors.

“As a society we are facing a big problem and it requires the institutional mobilisation of a wider range of socio-political actors, especially when it comes to some moves that have an effect on different structures and can lead to the vulnerability of parts of society,” Uljarevic told BIRN.

Opposition Social Democratic Party, SDP, MP Rasko Konjevic said the government should make it stays within the law in dealing with the pandemic.

“This situation is extremely serious and it is important for the state to show its organisation and strength but not to forget the Constitution and laws,” he said. “It’s important that we are all equal before the law.”

Concern rose on March 22 when the government published the names of those people ordered to self-isolate, arguing that some had chosen not to respect the order.

The government said it had received the consent of the Agency for Personal Data Protection, and the the lives and health of Montenegrin citizens came first.

Opposition parties and civil society groups were outraged.

Further concerns have been raised over a number of economic decisions issued by the government without consulting parliament, despite provisions in the constitution that specify such decisions can only be taken by the government under a state of emergency. Montenegro has not declared a state of emergency.

Konjevic said the government should consult more widely. “They could share responsibility with others,” he said.

Croatian Proposal to Track Self-Isolating Citizens Alarms Critics

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As Croatian MPs discussed a proposed law amendment, that would allow authorities easier access to citizens’ information amid the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, opposition lawmakers warned that it could limit citizens’ rights to freedom of movement and their privacy.

Last week, the government, led by the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, proposed a change of the Electronic Communications Act under which, in extraordinary situations, the health minister would ask telecommunications companies to provide data on the locations of users’ terminal equipment.

While MPs accept that the aim of the proposal is legitimate – to control people prescribed self-isolation, due to numerous violations of such orders – many of them complained that the government did not elaborate the proposal clearly, or with enough safeguards.

Social Democrat MPs and some other parliamentary groups have submitted an amendment seeking more clarity about who can be monitored, how long the surveillance will last, and what authorities will do with the data they collect. They also said the subject of monitoring must be regularly informed that he or she is under surveillance.

On Wednesday, Ombudsperson Lora Vidovic suggested amendments to the proposal, urging that the restriction should apply only “to narrow, clearly and precisely defined situations, only when the health and lives of citizens could not otherwise be effectively protected.

“Clear criteria should be explicitly defined in the law, which will ensure the implementation of this measure over precisely defined categories of citizens, for example, those who have determined self-isolation by the competent authorities,” Vidovic said in a press release.

MPs are also debating whether such a law changes could be passed by an urgent procedure in parliament, as the government wants, or by a simple majority of MPs, or whether a two-thirds majority is needed, as restrictions of such rights are a constitutional matter.

Article 17 of the constitution states that “individual constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and rights may [only] be restricted during a state of war or any clear and present danger to the independence and unity of the Republic of Croatia or in the event of any natural disaster”.

Under the constitution, imposing such restrictions must be decided by a two-thirds majority of all members of parliament.

However, MPs will not vote on the issue on Wednesday since the speaker, Gordan Jandrokovic, has announced that he will first seek the opinion of the Constitutional Court on the proposed “restricting of citizens’ freedoms”, which he said, were only introduced to protect citizens against coronavirus infection.

COVID-19: Dealing with Gaps in the Data

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One of the major problems with the COVID-19 pandemic is the speed at which the contagion spreads. This makes treating infected people much more difficult to manage, but also severely hinders our ability to have an up-to-date, thorough and trustworthy picture of the situation in Europe and the rest of the world.

The information we rely on is approximate and often errs on the side of caution (for example, the number of infected people, or deaths caused by the pandemic). It’s important to be aware of these limitations, and approach the data with caution, even if this data is the best we have, given the present circumstances. Of all official data on the global situation, that produced by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is considered among the most reliable. Nevertheless, new and more accurate studies are emerging every day, providing additional data to help understand the pandemic and its course of development.

How many are really infected?

We don’t know. What we do know is the number of confirmed infections – individuals testing positive for the virus – and highly approximate estimates of total infections.

The test for the virus involves taking a sample of saliva or mucus, which is then analysed for traces of the virus’ genetic code. The number of people being tested varies widely from country to country: depending, above all, on how well-equipped a country is to perform large-scale testing (often it’s not the kits that are lacking, but the personnel and laboratories required to analyse huge quantities of swabs). In certain countries, authorities decide to focus on people already showing symptoms associated with COVID-19, or even just those who are already hospitalised. We know, however, that many who have contracted the virus do not show any symptoms, or only start to show symptoms many days after being infected.

The percentage of infected people accounted for in the data varies widely from country to country. This makes it difficult to compare the development of the pandemic in different times and places. For example, Italy has performed around 3500 tests for every million inhabitants, compared to 6100 in South Korea, and 600 in Spain. According to an estimate attempted by the Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, in the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Italy and Spain may have only recorded 5 percent of people actually infected. 

How many have really died?

This is also unknown, even if the number of deaths can be estimated with more precision than cases of infection.

What we do know is the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 (unfortunately, the criteria for attribution are not yet internationally standardised). However, we cannot be sure that all deaths caused by the coronavirus have been recorded: in the most heavily hit areas of Italy, indications suggest that tests are not performed on all victims (many of those who die at home or in retirement homes, for example). Moreover, authoritarian regimes such as China and Iran may have an interest in publishing incomplete data in order to downplay the severity of the problem – thus the number of deaths caused by the pandemic may very well be higher than suggested by official counts.

How deadly is COVID-19?

No certainty here either. The relative danger of a disease can be measured by its case fatality rate – the number of deaths as a proportion of those infected – or the mortality rate, which measures the number of deaths as a proportion of the population. A case fatality rate of 4 percent indicates that for every 100 people infected the disease causes an average of four deaths.

The available estimates of COVID-19’s case fatality rate vary all too widely according to context. On the one hand, such variations could in fact be tied to local factors: for example, the disease is likely to have a greater impact in regions or countries where the population is older or more prone to respiratory illnesses, such as heavily polluted Northern Italy. Alternatively, such variations may only be apparent, and caused by differences in how data is collected. The case fatality rate compares two figures – deaths and infections – but, as we have seen, these figures are often recorded in different ways, and often contain significant gaps.

In any case, COVID-19’s case fatality rate is an order of magnitude greater than that of more mundane viral illnesses, such as seasonal flu. The latter typically causes the death of fewer than 0.1 percent of people infected, over many months, while it is estimated that COVID-19 causes an at least twenty or thirty times higher percentage of deaths, over just a few weeks. 

Two useful techniques for comparing data

Apart from the gaps and disparities in data collection, comparisons between regions and countries affected by the coronavirus are complicated by the fact that contagion didn’t start everywhere at the same time. Comparing Hubei province in China – where infection began around a month ago – with a country where contagion has just begun would not be particularly instructive. In order to compare such contexts, we should start with the day when the outbreak was registered in each area, and compare developments from there. For example, 15 days after the virus broke out in Italy, around 800 deaths had been recorded there, while in Spain, 15 days after the virus was detected in its territory, 2000 deaths had been recorded.

Another way to compare developments in countries with different data collection methods is to compare the rates of contagion in each country – for example, measuring the number of days it took for the number of confirmed deaths to double. In Germany, the figure doubled every two days, and in Italy every five days. In South Korea it has taken 13 days for the number of confirmed deaths to double, indicating that contagion has slowed down considerably.

Moldova Authorities Accused of Lacking Transparency About Pandemic

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Media NGOs in Moldova signed a common protest on Sunday, accusing the authorities of lacking transparency about the scale of the coronavirus pandemic in the country.

“Non-governmental organisations in the media ask the state authorities and institutions to ensure correct and professional collaboration with media institutions, refraining from unfounded accusations and insinuations against journalists who request public interest information to inform objectively and completely,” the petition signed by eight media NGOs says.

It comes after two cases of infected doctors from different hospitals were reported on March 19 and March 22. The authorities did not confirm them in the first phase, however. Only media outlets reported about them.

The authorities have also avoided giving out precise data on medical supply stocks and specific numbers related to the pandemic.

“They have blamed the press for criticism but, in fact, they do not offer complete information about the epidemiological crisis … The Prime Minister and President have responded harshly to reactions of media outlets who were trying to find out more information,” Cornelia Cozonac, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in Moldova, told BIRN.

She said journalists are forbidden to ask live questions during press briefings on the pandemic, and even those who are allowed to ask written questions do not get straight answers.

“It is not normal in this crisis. The authorities need to be much more open because they are asking citizens to cooperate as well. We, as journalists, want the authorities to be responsible, and to provide as accurate information as possible and to answer journalists’ questions to better inform the citizens,” she added.

Moldovan media have called on the authorities to at least organise video conferences with free Q&A sessions. No response has come as yet to this suggestion.

On March 19, the authorities opened a free online platform to present the numbers of infected cases in every district of the country, but on Monday, after the technical suspension of the website, it required a user and password.

President Igor Dodon on Monday at a press briefing accused some media of trying to “make a show” about the public health situation in Moldova.

“For some media sources that lately are trying to speculate and get things out of context – when I said there are 2,000 places ready [in hospitals], then that means there are that many. When we said that there are only 500 [ventilator] machines in Chisinau, someone tried to interpret that as are only 500 [bed] places. It is not correct. Of 94 [coronavirus] cases, only two needed these devices,” he said.

Both Dodon and Prime Minister Ion Chicu and his communication team have repeatedly accused the media of not properly informing the population.

However, on March 16, when an entire village was put under quarantine after the authorities held elections in the Hincesti district, amid the pandemic, the media only found that out by itself.

Hackers Step up Cyberattacks on Hospitals amid Pandemic

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Romanian cybersecurity giant Bitdefender said on Friday that online attacks linked to Covid-19 “have risen by 475 per cent in March as compared to the previous month”, and the numbers are expected to keep increasing until the end of the month .

“Almost one third of the Covid-19-related attacks target public authorities and healthcare institutions,” Bitdefender said in a statement.

One of the medical centres targeted was a hospital in the Czech Republic currently being used for tests against coronavirus.

Bitdefender’s security specialist Filip Truta said that “the cyberattack thwarts efforts in fighting the pandemic”.

Hackers usually infect computers by fooling medical institutions’ personnel with “information about medical procedures and therapies to treat COVID-19 infections”, said Bitdefender. Such messages are mostly sent in the name of institutions such as the World Health Organisation.

The statement mentions the US, Turkey and France as the most targeted countries in the world. Romania was the ninth more targeted country.

“Cyberattacks against hospitals can bring to a halt their activity if, for example, the medical data of the admitted patients is blocked,” Bitdefender said.

“Over time, attackers have repeatedly infected the computers with ransomware and then have asked for a ransom to give back the access to the data,” it added.

In a typical case of these kind of attacks, hackers “code data such as the patients’ medical records” making it impossible for the doctors to treat the patients or perform surgeries.

“As it has happened in Romania, the management of a hospital can be forced to pay a ransom to decode the data” to be able to save the patient.

Hackers also sell patients’ data for up to $400 per medical record on the deep web. Those who buy this information normally use it for frauds.

Bitdefender has decided to offer free assistance to medical institutions so they can step up their security during the coronavirus crisis. Hospitals, clinics and other medical centres can ask for help at the Bitdefender site. www.bitdefender.com/freehealthcaresecurity

Are you interested in topics related to freedom of information, data protection and cybersecurity? Find out more on our interactive platform, BIRN’s Investigative Resource Desk (BIRD).

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