April 2020 - BIRD

COVID-Related Boom Reveals Video Conferencing’s Dark Side

Posted on April 30, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

More than ever before, because of the coronavirus outbreak, use of video conferencing is on the rise.

Whether it is attending work meetings or online seminars and conferences, or taking part in leisure activities like online fitness classes and birthday parties – video conferencing and social media apps have brought huge relief, and a sense of continuity, to people feeling trapped inside their homes by government-imposed lockdowns.

However, while the coronavirus wreaks havoc outside, this time of increased online activities has also generated growing challenges. While some of the most popular video conferencing and video sharing apps, such as Zoom, Houseparty, and TikTok, have seen record-breaking growth in the numbers of users, the apps have also faced serious data breaches and other cybersecurity-related issues.

Cybersecurity experts say that while use of the apps has clearly reduced the risk of people getting infected with the virus by going outside, the same isn’t true for other viral problems, talking about cyberspace.

“Disclosure of personal data, recording sensitive information, or storing people’s profiles on unauthorized servers are some of the risks that go hand in hand with the use of video-conferencing tools,” says Skopje-based cybersecurity practitioner Daniel Trenchov.

“Greater use of virtual telecommunication tools does eliminate pandemic-induced risks,” he adds, “but not necessarily cybersecurity ones.”

Zoom ‘bombing’ is on the rise:

Illustration. Photo: EFE/MATTIA SEDDA

Last Friday, Michael Oghia, a Belgrade-based internet governance consultant, was getting ready for his weekly Zoom conference call with colleagues all over the world.

Usually, the group uses these meetings to chat and discuss ongoing social developments. This time, however, they experienced something more unpleasant.

“Around 45 minutes into the event, when one of the speakers went to share his screen, all of a sudden a child pornography video appeared. Once I realized what was happening, I immediately shut my laptop out of shock,” Oghia said.

“I couldn’t believe it. For a moment I thought that maybe it didn’t even happen. Then re-entered the Zoom call and wanted to see if the others had experienced it. Around 15 or 20 minutes later, another Zoom-bombing happened – again child porn. It was absolutely vile,” Oghia told BIRN.

“Zoom-bombing” incidents like this have become a regular occurrence for those using the app lately. In the last few months, since the coronavirus outbreak started, the app has seen the number of daily users increase hugely from 10 millio to 300 million.

After the incident, Oghia contacted Zoom to report what had happened. The company replied that it would investigate.

“Zoom-bombing is on the rise, and in this particular case, I’ve heard of multiple instances over the past few days of it happening (one group was the UK-based Open Rights Group, for instance),” Oghia explained.

“There will always be issues with safety concerns, but this is no excuse. I’ve used Zoom for years, and the ease of using the platform and the features it has have made video-conferencing easier. But they need to do an even better job at ensuring their privacy and making sure the security features are clear and easy to use.”

The incident prompted Oghia and his colleagues to prepare a short “zoom-bombing” prevention and resources guide to help others that are using Zoom and other video conferencing software.

In its latest statement, Zoom said that it would release an improved version of the app, addressing security concerns about phemonena like “bombing”, while also having upgraded encryption features.

More education in safe use of apps needed:

Illustration. Photo: EPA-EFE/AMEL PAIN

When it comes to the security of video-conferencing apps, several factors are crucial, cybersecurity experts explain. One is having a proper education in the safe use of these social tools.

“These apps have a very useful role and that is why their use should not be avoided, but it is necessary to educate ourselves more, to provide the highest possible protection,” a Skopje-based personal data protection expert, Ljubica Pendaroska, told BIRN.

It is essential to note that not every app is designed for use at home. Zoom was designed for use by large businesses with in-house IT specialists who would set up and control the software when using it, Pendaroska explained.

Now, especially during lockdowns, while Zoom is still mostly used for business purposes, people are using it more for family events such as birthdays, or even wedding celebrations.

“Potential hazards also come from the fact that these apps detect and remove issues most often on the go, or as they occur,” she said.

“What’s particularly concerning is that most of these tools are not encrypted by end-user to end-user, which increases the possibility of so-called ‘interception’ of communications by unwanted and malicious participants,” she added.

Houseparty, another popular video conferencing app, has also faced intense security scrutiny over the last months.

The app is popular with teenagers and youngsters who use it to play various group games, giving it a more fun-based approach compared to other apps. At the same time, these groups are potentially vulnerable to various security issues that can arise.

“There are also apps, for example like Houseparty, where to make it easier to find friends, you can connect your account with phone contacts and social media accounts,” Pendaroska noted. “This enormously increases the potential danger not only for your safety but also for the safety of all these contacts,” she added.

“There could be hacker attacks; during the meeting, the administrator can see details such as the operating system, IP address and location data of each of the participants; also, uninvited users in the communication, if the password is not authenticated, could use the conversation to spread malicious links or send files,” she explained.

Espionage concerns linked to China:

Illustration. Photo: Pxhere

TikTok, a Chinese video-sharing social network, is increasingly popular in the Balkans, especially among teenagers who post various challenges to each other, such as dance-offs, sing-offs and so on.

But in some parts of the world, there are initiatives to ban it. In the US, lawmakers have introduced a bill to the Senate, which cites the company’s connection to the Chinese government, saying its potential collection of data from US citizens represents a security risk to the US.

Global cybersecurity companies have also identified many security vulnerabilities in the app that could allow malicious actors to manipulate its content and reveal the personal data of its users.

Cybersecurity experts say one way that tech companies could deal with such security risks and the consequences for their users is by having transparency reports.

“This could also include independent security audits of their code looking for weaknesses and flaws – akin to what Microsoft and Apple do with their operating systems, or what Google does with its “bug bounty” program,” Oghia suggested.

When it comes to the users themselves, the best prevention is to know not only what these apps bring to the table, but just as importantly, what their software solutions and vulnerabilities are.

Research by Picodi.com, an international e-commerce platform, says interest in video messaging clients has increased by seven times since the coronavirus restrictions were introduced in many European countries.
WhatsApp was the most frequently searched messaging app in 22 European countries. It is also a favourite app in the Czech Republic, Albania, Romania and Turkey.
Worldwide interest in the Zoom video app is skyrocketing, in Europe as well, with it being the most popular app in 14 countries, including Moldova, North Macedonia and Slovenia.
Besides WhatsApp and Zoom, people were massively using Skype – in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Greece, Viber – in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, and Microsoft teams – in Croatia and Bulgaria.
Picodi.com analyzed the average number of online search queries of 19 messaging clients which enable video chatting.

COVID-19 Worsening Environment for Media Freedom, Report Warns

Posted on April 29, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Journalists across Eastern Europe, the Balkans but, increasingly also in Western Europe, faced a new level of threats, harassment and risk of imprisonment during 2019, according to the Council of Europe Platform to Promote the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists, in a report presented on Wednesday by 14 organisations partnered in the platform.

The report, “Attacks on media in Europe Must Not Become the New Normal”, states that about 140 alerts were filed with the platform during 2019, including 103 from Turkey, 21 from Serbia and 11 from Albania.

A disputed media law in Albania proposed by Prime Minister Edi Rama last year, the closure of the last remaining critical TV shows and the harassment of journalists by pro-government media resulted in Albania getting a separate chapter in the report, meaning also that Albania was added to the list of countries of special concern.

Sarah Clarke, from Article 19, said the report noted SLAPP cases as a major concern. These Strategic Litigations Against Public Participation are lawsuits against journalists or activists in which plaintiffs use their financial power to drag critics into lengthy court processes that then encourage others in the media to practise self-censorship.

“There has been an elevated threat from the political level and juridical harassment against journalists. We included SLAPPS as a concern for the first time,” Clarke said.

Meanwhile, the new coronavirus pandemic has caused a whole new set of concerns, said Scott Griffen, from the International Press Institute. He said there had been a systemic attempt by several governments to control the narrative of the pandemic, referring to Hungary and other states.

“Hungary has criminalized the distribution of ‘distorted facts’”, Griffen said, adding that this could amount to a “criminalization of journalism”. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Serbia have also seen arrests for reports on the spread of the new coronavirus that annoyed the authorities.

Ricardo Gutierrez, General Secretary of European Federation of Journalists, said the collapse of advertising revenues in the media across Europe due to COVID-19 had left thousands of journalists unemployed and left tens of thousands of freelancers without any real income. “COVID-19 is causing a global collapse of press freedom,” Gutierrez warned.

William Horsley, from the Association of European Journalists, said media ownership was another worrying issue. Standards were deteriorating across the continent, he said, urging EU member states to “be particularly strict over its standards”.

“There is an increasing shift of media ownership toward governments and governments partners, the so-called oligarchs,” Horsley noted.

Bulgaria was singled out as a country where the media has been captured by oligarchs. “A major share of the country’s newspaper distribution business is under the control of a single conglomerate, owned by a politician. Independent journalists and media outlets are regularly subject to intimidation in person and online,” the report noted. Meanwhile, out of 135 journalists currently jailed or under detention, 91 of these are in Turkey.

Croatian Journalists Hit by Coronavirus Austerity: Union Chief

Posted on April 29, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

“The crisis has affected journalists, so salaries have already been cut at a number of media outlets,” the president of Trade Union of Croatian Journalists, Maja Sever, a longtime journalist with Croatian public broadcaster HRT, told BIRN in an interview.

Sever noted that some outlets have cut employees’ salaries by 50 per cent, and that “some media did it even before the financial indicators showed that something like this should be done”.

She recalled how the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists and the Croatian Journalists’ Association warned the government that measures must be taken to safeguard journalism soon after the crisis began, but did not receive a meaningful response.

For this reason, she believes that the role of the journalists’ union, as well as unions in general, is more important than ever.

“Under labour law, it is the union that has the legal basis to negotiate with an employer about possible cutbacks. Basically, it’s the one institution that we have with which we can fight for our rights, even in crisis situations like this, but also in situations where we are not in some kind of crisis,” Sever said.

Government should protect media workers

Maja Sever, the president of Trade Union of Croatian Journalists and Hrvoje Zovko, president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, on a meeting with Croatian President Zoran Milanovic. Photo: Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia.

According to a survey by the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists and the Croatian Journalists’ Association, less than a month into the crisis, as many as 28 per cent of Croatian freelance journalists and part-time media employees were left without any media work, 26 per cent lost most of their engagements, and 16 per cent of them lost half of their engagements.

This shows that more freelancers should be unionised, said Sever: “This crisis has shown how unprotected they are; their contracts are simply cancelled and that’s it.”

Both journalists’ organisations have argued that measures taken by the government to support the economy during the pandemic have mainly aided entrepreneurs and commercial publishers.

To avoid more redundancies among journalists and other media workers, they suggested that the measures to safeguard solvency and employment should be urgently extended to all media.

More than a month after these warnings, Sever and Hrvoje Zovko, president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, met separately on Thursday with Croatian President Zoran Milanovic and Culture Minister Nina Obuljen Korzinek, whose ministry is responsible for the media sector.

“The president, in principle, was talking with us and supporting our efforts. [But] he does not have the mechanisms or authority to do such a thing [impose measures to save journalism],” Sever said.

“As far as the minister is concerned… I cannot say that there have been any developments that we have agreed upon, but the fact is that we have begun talks on some topics and started to talk specifically about how to help freelance journalists,” she continued, adding that it is necessary to speed up the disbursement of EU aid funds which will “certainly help many non-profit media”.

Although the Croatian government has enacted a job-saving measure that gives financial assistance to employers to retain employees, Sever warned that the criteria for receiving state aid are related to bans on layoffs, not bans on wage cuts.

Commenting on the meeting with the journalists’ organisations, Obuljen Korzinek told Jutarnji list newspaper on Sunday that “there have already been a number of government measures adopted to assist the economy concerning the media” and that talks continue with journalists’ associations about supporting independent journalists.

Press freedom still endangered

A man wearing a protective face mask reads a newspaper in Zagreb, Croatia. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANTONIO BAT.

Sever argued that Croatian journalists, who are now facing a major threat to their health while covering the coronavirus crisis in the country, are underappreciated.

“For the first week of the crisis, we made a huge effort [to raise awareness] that journalists must be protected… We also wrote to the ministries, to the employers. Then we procured the protective equipment by ourselves and sent it to the people who asked for it,” she recalled.

The union also called for press conferences to be held in a way that would protect the participants from possible infection.

“Unlike most of our fellow citizens who were able to stay home with their families, we journalists go to our job every day, exposing ourselves and our families to health hazards,” she continued, adding that part-time media workers and freelance journalists do not have proper health insurance coverage.

Meanwhile, she added, “journalists are still exposed to attacks”.

At Catholic Easter, on April 14, when a journalist from the local news website Dalmatinski Portal and a camera operator from N1 TV tried to report on an Easter mass being held in defiance of social distancing measures at a church in Sirobuja, a suburb of Split, they were physically attacked by several men.

On the same day in Sirobuja, a rally was held by masked, black-clad protesters to support the priest who had called on worshippers to attend the mass. Two of the protesters displayed World War II fascist Ustasa movement’s insignia and a banner with the slogan “Journalists are worms”.

According to Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, Croatia has improved its press freedom status and is now ranked 59th in the world, whereas in 2019 was ranked 64the. A lower score indicates greater press freedom, but Sever described it as “small progress”.

“We are still in a society that is not known for media freedom. I think we would have to do a lot more, but unfortunately [from] large operations like public media to some kind of support for independent journalism and non-profit media, in principle we are failing to make any significant steps,” she said.

“Politicians still like to have some influence on the big mainstream media and this is really felt in this crisis,” she continued.

Sever dismissed the suggestion that Croatia should take comfort in the fact that, as far as media freedom is concerned, the country is doing better than some of its ex-Yugoslav neighbours.

“Why don’t we compare ourselves to countries that are just a little north of our geographical location and then see how we stand with press freedom?” she asked.

‘It’ll be Bloody’: Under Jansa, Troubled Times for Slovenian Media

Posted on April 28, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The spread of COVID-19 and the return to power of veteran right-winger Janez Jansa are contributing to an increasingly hostile environment for journalists in Slovenia, media watchdogs are warning.

Jansa, an anti-immigration ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, returned for a third stint as prime minister on March 13, a little over a week after Slovenia confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus that has since killed 79 people in the former Yugoslav republic.

He replaced Marjan Sarec, whose centre-left coalition fell in January. The change of power coincided with what the International Press Institute, IPI, says is an unprecedented wave of insults and online smear campaigns against journalists in Slovenia.

Jansa himself has taken to Twitter to denounce the Slovenian public broadcaster; his government has sought to portray mainstream media outlets as heirs of the Yugoslav-era communist security services, while the government’s Crisis Headquarters tasked with coordinating the fight against COVID-19 has retweeted anonymous attacks on investigative journalist Blaz Zgaga.

“This is, in a way, a defeat in the field of democracy,” said Slovenian political scientist Alem Maksuti. “[Slovenian] media are coming under tremendous pressure, while like any other media they must simply objectively inform the public what’s going on.”

“And once again this thesis has emerged that authoritarian regimes which want to establish greater power are taking on those who have different opinions,” Maksuti told BIRN.

Governments exploiting pandemic to curb media freedoms

A cyclist wearing protective mask passes in the almost empty Preseren square, in Ljubljana. Photo: EPA-EFE/IGOR KUPLJENIK.

In mid-March, Zgaga, an investigative reporter and correspondent for the international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, RSF, complained to IPI that he had been the target of a smear article in a news weekly close to Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party, SDS, after he had asked the government about the operations and structure of a newly-founded Crisis Headquarters created by the government to lead the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Headquarters did not respond. Instead, its official Twitter account retweeted an anonymous attack on Zgaga describing him as having “escaped from quarantine” and carrying a “COVID-Marx/Lenin virus,” a play on a common smear by the Slovenian right-wing against its opponents on the left or centre. Zgaga also received anonymous, online death threats.

On April 17, RSF and six other press freedom organisations urged the European Commission – the executive arm of the European Union, of which Slovenia is a member – to do everything in its power to guarantee the safety of the Zgaga and ensure that “death threats and attacks against him are treated with the utmost seriousness by the Slovenian authorities.”

“Despite the unprecedented context in which Slovenia and other countries currently find themselves, the COVID-19 crisis shouldn’t be an excuse to prevent journalists from doing their job,” RSF said, echoing the deep concern felt by media watchdogs over press freedoms across Central and Eastern Europe since the onset of the pandemic.

‘Unjustified attacks’ on public broadcaster

Slovenian Minister of Economic Development and Technology Zdravko Pocivalsek speaks to the media during the reception of the first batch of a seven-ton shipment of personal protection equipment from Quingdao, China. Photo: EPA-EFE/IGOR KUPLJENIK.

Zgaga, however, was not the only target.

On March 20, the Council of Europe’s Platform for the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists reported that Jansa had used social media to accuse public broadcaster Radiotelevizija Slovenija, RTVS, of spreading lies about the government. He issued a veiled threat over its funding.

RTVS Director General Igor Kadunc denounced what he said were “grossly unjustified attacks” on RTVS coverage aimed to the “subordination of the central media to one political option.”

Spela Stare, secretary general of the Slovene Association of Journalists, DNS, noted that at the outset of the pandemic, the government had sought to halt journalists from asking questions at its regular COVID-19 press conferences. RTVS was supposed to simply broadcast the statements of speakers.

“Journalists could only send the questions in advance via email. No real-time questions,” Stare told BIRN. “We protested, of course, and demanded at least video conferences for questions.”

The government backed down, to a degree, allowing journalists to pose questions from a separate location or submit them in advance.

“Not ideal, but better than what was first announced,” Stare said, while noting that the opportunity for follow-up questions had clearly become limited.

For Slovenian media, trouble ahead

Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANTONIO BAT.

Not long after the protest from the Council of Europe’s protection of journalism platform, a reply appeared on the platform’s site from Slovenia’s mission to the CoE, questioning the journalistic standards of Slovenian media and claiming that “the majority of the main media in Slovenia have their origins in the former Communist regime and even in the late 1990s the positions of editors-in-chief were held by the former members of the infamous security service UDBA.”

The Slovene Association of Journalists denounced the letter as having “no basis in reality.”

“It only reflects the ideological views of the biggest government party and smears Slovenia’s reputation internationally,” the association said.

Maksuti said the government was trying to “invent an enemy that has been dead for years – Communism.”

Foreign Minister Anze Logar defended the wording of the response, which he said was drawn up by a government communications office, telling parliament that the government had faced significant criticism in the media in its first month in office.

Journalists he ran into, Logar said, “do not seem scared… I did not see fear in their eyes.”

With the next parliamentary election due in 2022, Maksuti said the future of Jansa’s four-party coalition government was hard to predict.

“I think politics will be closer to what we can see in Hungary, Poland or Slovakia,” he said, “where some of the civilisational steps we’ve made are becoming issues again – abortion, same-sex marriage and so on.”

Jansa’s government is working on a package of laws, part of which Maksuti said may seek to abolish licence fees for the public broadcaster and give more prominence and improved frequencies to media seen, he said, as “party extensions” of Jansa’s SDS.

“In the media field, it’ll be bloody,” Maksuti said.

Romania’s Drive to Censor ‘Fake News’ Worries Activists

Posted on April 27, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

A few days ago, a Romanian MP, Liviu Plesoianu, from the opposition Social Democratic Party, PSD, asked the authorities to block access to the official presidential website, presidency.ro, which he accused of spreading fake news emitted by “a citizen named Klaus Werner Iohannis”.

Plesoianu on April 25 invoked article 54 of the decree issued on 16 March by President Iohannis declaring a state of emergency, which has been used to block access to a dozen websites since then.

The article grants special powers to the National Authority for the Administration and Reglamentation of Communications, ANCOM, on the request of the Interior Ministry, to block access to any online news platform that publishes content “promoting fake news regarding the COVID-19 evolution and the protection and prevention measures”.

According to Plesoianu, the presidential website was itself guilty of such charges on 11 March, the day the World Health Organization, WHO, declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

That day, Iohannis posted a speech on the website in which he said: “Even older people who have other health problems as well, generally have an acceptable condition” – and warned against calling the coronavirus a “killer virus”.

Beyond the debate about whether this assertion constituted misinformation, the MP’s request to close the website for posting “fake news” has few prospects of success, as the National Liberal Party government will not likely take such action against its presidential ally.

But Plesoianu’s stunt has raised bigger questions about the legitimacy of a legal provision that grants the government a referee role to decide what is fake news, and what content can be published or should be censored.

“Whoever decides what is fake news today can decide what is fake based on the preferences of the moment,” Cosmin Pojoranu, from the fact-checking website Factual.ro, told BIRN.

Pojoranu expresses concerns over the opaque nature of the decision-making process when it comes to blocking access to websites.

While it is known that ANCOM acts on the request of the Ministry of the Interior’s cluster, created to deal with the pandemic, no details have been revealed about the criteria they use to evaluate content – or if fixed criteria even exist. The public only finds out what’s happened, Pojoranu noted, “through a stark communication, when it is already done”.

Cristina Lupu, of the Centre for Independent Journalism, CJI, calls this lack of transparency “the most worrying part” of the situation. “Blocking access to sites is like a nuclear button; you need to press it with extreme attention and to explain very well how you took that decision,” Lupu told BIRN, warning of potential abuses of this kind of mechanism to censor information in the future.

‘Plan to exterminate pensioners’ and other follies

The websites that are punished for spreading fake news about the coronavirus pandemic, and the government’s response to it, have normally published what most rational persons would rapidly identify as plain lies.

One is the Orthodox Christian news platform ortodoxinfo.ro, whose access was restricted on 24 April, after it published an item of news about a supposed government plan to “kill pensioners in concentration and extermination camps”.

The article was signed by one Paul Ghitiu and published after a Romanian official who was subsequently dismissed proposed a plan to place people over 65 in separate locations as a way to protect them from infection, while scrapping movement restrictions for the rest of the population.

Romanian president Klaus Iohannis. Bucharest, Romania, 23 April 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/DRAGOS ASAFTEI / ROMANIAN PRESIDENCY / HANDOUT

The authorities justified their decision to close the site, citing alleged “behavioural changes” that the article could unleash among readers.

Other sites targeted by the government’s anti-fake news campaign are bpnews.ro, romania-veche.ro and justitiarul.ro.

Access to them was blocked after they published several stories promoting theories that denounced the pandemic as an invention of Big Pharma and “a conspiracy that pursues the introduction of chips in human bodies through vaccines”, or which accused the Romanian government of using the outbreak to push mandatory vaccination.

Programmer Ovidiu Mihalcea, one of its founders of the news portal Rubrika.ro, uses his IT skills to trace the origins of such misinformation and, together with two colleagues, elaborates a newsletter of “news about fake news”.

Mihalcea identifies two types of websites spreading such outlandish theories. On the one hand, he said, are those who “do it just for profit”, have no clear political interest and publish “all kinds of sensationalist news”. Others are run by “people who tend to believe the ideas they promote”, mostly having right-wing nationalist views.

A counter-productive approach?

Besides questioning the legitimacy of the methods that the authorities are applying to curb the transmission of fake news, journalists and activists also doubt the efficiency of the approach they have adopted.

CJI’s Cristina Lupu has received many pieces of content promoting disinformation these days, and said most do not come in the form of links to websites like those that have been cancelled but as messages on WhatsApp and social media.

“The closure of some sites has only a cosmetic effect and does not resolve the problem,” said Lupu.

Pojoranu concurs, seeing the closure measures as a drop in the ocean. He advocates educating the public to discern real news from aberrations like those making the rounds these days. “There are too many sources on the internet, you would need to close half of the internet,” he says, describing the repressive approach to misinformation. “You would need an army, a ministry of censorship,” he added.

Moreover, Pojoranu believes that blocking access to fake news websites can have “a boomerang effect” and amplify the reverberation of some content that would otherwise reach a much more limited number of people.

“You risk making it become mainstream,” he said about the consequences of such false information making it into traditional media when it informs people about official reprisals.

Efforts to silence these obscure and often marginal sources, he argued, might paradoxically encourage more people to believe in conspiracies about the government’s control of information.

Hungary Censoring Information on COVID-19, Report Says

Posted on April 27, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The Hungarian government has centralized communications about the pandemic and is filtering the release of information about COVID-19, a new report claims.

It says alternative sources of information, especially healthcare workers, are afraid of being fired if they talk to the press, and that the new “Coronavirus bill” will lead to more self-censorship among journalists.

These are the main conclusions of a report compiled by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, HCLU.

It surveyed editors and journalists of 19 independent media outlets on their experiences of how the government and other state institutions handled information about the COVID-19 outbreak in the first month of the crisis.

The main body handling the pandemic in Hungary is the so-called Operational Group, OG, it notes, which holds a daily press conference.

Hospitals, ministries, professional organizations and other state institutions are not allowed to talk to the press about the pandemic, and all questions related to it must be submitted to this body.

Moreover, only a few weeks after the outbreak started, the OG moved its press conferences online, so that journalists can now only email questions, making it impossible to re-submit unanswered questions.

Also, questions chosen for answering are highly selected, certain outlets are neglected and many sensitive questions remain unanswered, according to the report.

While local municipalities have become more open to the press about the outbreak, mayors also suffer from a lack of information, the report says.

According to the surveyed journalists, alternative sources of information have become scarce. “Even if anonymity is guaranteed, nobody dares to speak to journalists, as they are afraid of retaliation. Healthcare workers are the most intimidated, while their voice is missed the most, to know the reality,” the HCLU report says.

The report quotes one journalist who said a physician friend told him: “Don’t write this because I’ll be fired and you’ll go to jail.” They were referring to the new “Bill on protection against coronavirus” that Hungary’s parliament passed in March.

The controversial bill allows Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government to rule by decree without any time limit. It also amends criminal law to introduce jail terms of one to five years for anyone convicted of spreading “falsehood” or “distorted truth” about the pandemic.

The HCLU says the new legislation effectively forces journalists to self-censor their work.

“Due to the wording of the bill, it is very uncertain what could be proven in front of a court. Now, it seems, a trustworthy source will be not enough; we’ll need to present every piece of evidence. We are vulnerable to the judges’ goodwill,” it quotes one journalist as saying. Another added that, owing to the lack of non-government sources, they have few chances to check incoming information.

Last, the report states, defamation of independent media outlets has become more regular in the state and pro-government media, which routinely call articles critical of the government “fake news”.

On March 15, according to the report, for example, when Zoltán Kovács, Secretary of State for International Communication, attended the daily press conference, instead of answering a question about Hungary’s testing protocol, he rebuked the journalists in a condescending and humiliating way.

The HCLU report says the newspaper Magyar Hang’s articles are constantly labeled “fake news” in the public media, after it published an internal letter from the vice-president of the Hungarian National Blood Transfusion Service asking co-workers not to wear protective masks.

“The scope of such reports is clearly the public defamation and discrediting of independent media outlets,” the HCLU said.

West Funding Favoured Media in Moldova, Socialist Deputy Claims

Posted on April 24, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The Socialist vice-speaker of the Moldovan parliament, Vlad Batrincea, told the assembly on Thursday that Western countries had given favoured media outlets in the country “millions of euros” during the pandemic, saying funding the media appeared to be their priority.

“Do you know what is the first money that comes from our dear partners, from the West? The first money, grants of millions of euros, big money, comes for media institutions, for more light on the issue of COVID-19,” Batrincea said.

The deputy also claimed that many journalists in Moldova had received thousands of euros in envelopes, without paying any income tax on it.

Batrincea made a name for himself for xenophobic attitudes towards neighbouring Romania when he ripped up a map of the country in the Moldovan parliament.

He is also known for harsh anti-LGBT statements. The deputy said he would reveal the names of these media beneficiaries in time. “I have this information and if we start this fight, OK, it will be mutual,” he added, without further elaboration.

Media NGO leaders criticised the allegation and denied such practices occurred, saying all international grants for the media required transparency as a rule.

“There cannot be any payments ‘in envelopes’. Independent media, especially those supported by grants, ensure transparency,” the director of the Centre of Independent Journalism in Moldova, Nadine Gogu, told the Ziarul de Garda newspaper. She added that it was regrettable for politicians to make such claims, adding that journalists should be left alone to do their work.

The director of the Independent Press Association, API, Petru Macovei, said such statements were an attack on journalists and politicians should refrain from such “anti-democratic slide slips”.

“The EU and other donors do not impose editorial conditions on journalists, as politicians, who own various media outlets, do,” said Macovei.

He added that the ruling Socialist Party was the main beneficiary of the concentration of media ownership in the country and was the owner of the principal media holding company.

“Batrincea has put honest journalists and pseudo-journalists, who do services for parties, in the same basket. He has used this situation to accuse all employees in the media of corruption,” Macovei continued.

He warned that it would be dangerous for the ruling party to resume the practice of the former ruling Communists and Democrats to use the secret service and police to practise surveillance on journalists.

Russian-language media have strengthened their position in Moldova since Igor Dodon became President and the Socialist Party took power in November 2019.

New investors in the media include Igor Chaika, the son of the former Russian General Prosecutor, who has become the owner of Primul in Moldova TV Channel, as Moldovan media have reported.

North Macedonia’s State of Emergency Weakens Institutions’ Transparency

Posted on April 24, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Citing health crises and states of emergency, some Balkan countries have used the situation to restrict the right to information and media freedom.

While authorities in North Macedonia have imposed no such curbs, some restrictions in access to information have still appeared by themselves.

This is mainly because many public-sector workers now work at home, while those who remain in offices cannot always respond to information requests in the timeframe prescribed by law.

Some public institutions also say that, owing to staff shortages, they simply cannot obtain the information that citizens, journalists, NGOs and others want.

Both the institutions and those requesting information say that for now, problems are often solved in mutual agreements that allow for a delay of a few days, enabling institutions to cope.

North Macedonia’s law on freedom of access to public information does not envisage what should happen to such rights in extraordinary situations like this one.

Some of those seeking information are worried that some institutions may say that the deadlines to respond to FOIA requests should be frozen in the pandemic, and should only start to expire after the state of emergency is over. So far, no testimonies suggest that this has actually happened, however.

Delays instead of rejections

North Macedonia’s central bank. Photo: BIRN

North Macedonia passed a new FOIA act in 2019, which cut the deadlines for institutions to provide access to information from 30 to 20 days.

The law came into full force at the start of this year, once the team at the Agency for Protection of the Right of Information, which is responsible for complaints when institutions fail to do their duties, was fully formed.

The government insists that although it has a right under the state of emergency to pass decrees with the force of a law, it has no plan to restrict access to information.

“We won’t make changes. Transparency and access to public information are particularly important in this state of emergency,” Justice Minister Renata Deskoska told BIRN.

Despite that, institutions offer plentiful reasons why they can’t provide anwers on time.

These range from claims that the staff responsible for the information are working from home, are at home parenting a small child or are taking days off.

The Center for Civil Communication, CCC, an NGO, is preparing its index on transparency of institutions at the zenith of the pandemic.

CCA head German Filkov told BIRN that although it sent FOIA requests to all ministries and municipalities asking them to provide the number of their employees, just before the deadline to answer expired, it received such data from only 29 per cent of them. All the others said they would be late.

“They told us that that the people who should provide the info are not at work because of the pandemic,” he said.

“Not the people in charge of access to information but those from the appropriate sector, in our case, the sectors for human resources. They did not say that they won’t respond but that they cannot meet the deadline,” Filkov added.

Justice Minister Deskoska said such excuses are unacceptable and the law should be respected despite the state of emergency. “Institutions must organize themselves and deliver the data via mail or in other ways,” she said.

No official change in practice

Skopje’s health emergency centre. Photo: BIRN

Some NGO’s are worried that a government provision on the Law on Public and Administrative Procedures, passed on March 23, might also delay the deadlines for providing information.

This provision says that that all deadlines for administrative procedures are frozen during the state of emergency, and will only resume once normality is restored – for the same amount of days that they have been frozen.

This provision refers to services that the government, ministries, agencies, directorates and other institutions provide to citizens, companies and other subjects, such as issuing permits and delivering decisions.

However, during the debates at different institutions on how to interpret this provision, some proposed restricting the right to access to public information as well. The Interior Ministry has considered this, though not put it into practice.

“We talked to colleagues, and despite some opinions that deadlines could be postponed in accordance with the government’s provision … we decided not to stop answering FOIA requests,” Interior Ministry spokesperson Toni Angelovski told BIRN.

“The conditions are harder because the persons with certain information are not always present at work, but, despite that, we manage to reply on requests on time,” he added.

Although other institutions have also had divided opinions on this, no ministry or lower ranking institution has yet said on its web page that it is changing its practice of answering FOIA requests.

Everything remains the same as before the crisis, and the institutions still display the public info they hold, the legal provisions on how to get it and the contacts of the persons in charge.

Mirce Kotevski, who handles these procedures in the state electricity producing company, ESM, said they never reject information requests. “Some requests are complicated and demand the coordination of several sectors,” he said.

“It all takes time in normal conditions, and even more in these conditions,” he added.

“People are not always here to provide the info. We try to respect the deadlines, but in some cases, if that is objectively impossible, we ask for, and get, understanding from those who file requests for a few days’ postponement. But we never reject requests.”

Deadlines in courts are postponed

North Macedonia’s Parliament. Photo: BIRN

But if something goes wrong and an institution refuses to answer a FOIA request, and again rejects the complaint, there will be a problem. This is because the deadlines in courts have been put on hold.

In normal circumstances, the person or body that requested the information could submit a complaint to the administrative court.

Now, however, courts, including the administrative court, won’t start procedures until the state of emergency ends. Under the government provision, they are instructed to act only on high priority cases.

In reality, this tool has not been particularly useful to complainants, even in normal times, as the procedures in these cases often lasted years.

For the media and journalists, the work of the Agency for Protection of the Right of Information is more crucial, and this agency says that it is still working without delays, and has not seen any increase in the volume of complaints.

“There is no significant difference. The law envisages that institutions can request postponement of deadlines from 20 to 30 days if they need to provide more cumbersome information that takes time to collect. But the law does not envisage how to act in a state of emergency,” the head of the Agency, Plamenka Bojceva, said.

Little evidence of “active” transparency

While most institutions are trying to answer requests and maintain at least so-called “passive” transparency, some give an impression of not engaging equally in so-called “active” transparency, which means publishing information requested by law on their own, without being asked.

Some of the most important items of information of this kind are public procurement contracts.

The crisis has imposed the need of swift procurements, especially for medical institutions. Institutions don’t need an opinion from the State Public Procurements Bureau on these, but they are still obliged by law to disclose all the data on their own once they finish the procurements.

This is not the case, however. The CCC, in a recent analysis, said that by April 5, institutions had published only 17 announcements for public procurement contracts, and had notified the public that they had chosen the best bidder in only 12 instances.

According to the NGO, this raises questions about whether institutions are truly respecting their obligation to publish such information.

Even those contracts that have been published are often missing crucial details. For example, the contracts for the procurement of masks and gloves were published without detailed information about anything else, making it impossible to determine whether the price paid was justifiable.

In its second analysis on this subject, published on April 22, covering the period from the beginning of March to April 20, the NGO said things hadn’t changed much. All five contracts were missing quantity details.

CCC warns that the state of emergency, and the general shortage of needed products, are increasing the risks of corruption, because if public procurements procedures are not transparent, suppliers may use this situation to increase their prices.

Its analyses conclude that, in this time of crisis, because it is practically the only source of info, in the absence of the usual calls and tendering documentation the publication of all the data on contracts is even more important.

A Password Pandemic. How Did a COVID-19 Password End Up Online?

Posted on April 23, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The Covid – 19 Information System is a centralized software for collecting, analyzing and storing data on all persons monitored for the purpose of controlling and suppressing the pandemic in Serbia.

A SHARE Foundation screen shot of instructions on how to enter the database, which includes how employees were told that they can log in their shifts in the COVID-19 infirmary. Password and user names were also made public.

How did we get this data?

Along with the state of emergency, the Government of Serbia introduced numerous measures to tackle the pandemic, which included collecting and processing personal data in the unprecedent circumstances.

The Government also informed citizens about these measures by rendering unclear and undetailed conclusions, none of which specified who was supposed to process the citizens’ data and how.

In an effort to understand the data flow and implications on citizens’ rights, we explored the new normative framework through publicly available sources. By searching keywords on Google, we accidentally discovered the page containing access information for the COVID-19 Information System. The data was published on the 9^th of April.

In addition, we also managed to obtain manuals with instructions for navigating the centralised system webpage.

Which data was at risk?

As per Government’s Conclusion on establishing the Covid-19 Information System, a significant number of health institutions is required to use the mentioned software to keep records on cured, deceased and tested persons (whether positive or negative), as well as on persons currently being treated, in self-isolation or put in temporary hospitals, including their location data. This system also contains data on persons who are possible disease-carriers due to their contact with other infected persons. The institutions are required to provide daily data updates, as it’s the basis of the the diurnal 15 o’clock report read.

While attempting to clarify how our data is being stored, we could not have imagined that we would discover the access password and thus be able to enter the system – just as anyone else who may have found this webpage. It was immediately clear to us that the most sensitive citizens’ data were endangered and that the crucially important integrity of the system cannot be guaranteed in the fight against the pandemic.

We did not log into the system, which would anyway record such an attempt. Instead, we reported the case to competent authorities: the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, the National CERT and the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications.

Being aware of the risk of misuse arising with the accessibility of citizens’ sensitive data, we have decided to notify the public of the incident only after making sure that the authorities had prevented unauthorized access to the system.

A SHARE Foundation screen shot of an email sent to competent authorities: the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications and National CERT. SHARE urged the authorities to act in accordance with their rules and to appropriately inform them on the action.

How did the competent bodies react?

Less than an hour following our report, we were informed that the initial steps were taken as a response to the incident, making sure that the web page containing the username and the password is no longer publicly available.

Given the scope of the case, we may expect further action from the competent bodies. The Commissioner has the authority to initiate monitoring in line with the Law on Personal Data Protection, the competent ministry is in charge of the inspection monitoring in line with the Law on Information Security, whereas the National CERT has the obligation to provide advice and recommendations in case of an incident.

Who’s to blame?

Aware of the pressure put on health services at the peak of the pandemic, we agreed that, for now, it would be appropriate not to publish the information on the specific health institution in which the incident took place. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the scale of this incident demands that the responsibility for its occurrence is properly determined.

The national legislative framework provides various mechanisms to prevent these kinds of situations, but the occurrences in practice are often far from the prescribed standards. Although they handle particularly sensitive data, health workers are often unaware of all possible risks present in the digital era. Health institutions are required to appoint a data protection officer, but due to limited resources, persons with insufficient expertise and unrelated primary job concerns are usually appointed to this position. In this specific case, the data protection officer may have been a person who takes care of corona-infected persons on a daily basis.

As today’s data protection demands the involvement of an IT expert, this requirement causes an additional burden to the public health institutions’ budget. Sometimes this means that the same person deals with all technical issues within an institution, while being paid far less than their private sector counterparts and without the opportunity to build further information security expertise.

Covid-19 Information System established by the Government represents a key point in a complex architecture for collecting and processing all defined data. Data collection occurs through different channels, while a single health institution is only a one system entrance point. In such a system, it is rather difficult to implement protection measures at entrance point level, meaning they should be defined at the central level as it would significantly lower the risk of incidents. Based on this case, we have concluded that only one user account was created for each of the health institutions, which does not enable determining individual responsibility for the system misuse.

What should have been done?

Without doubt, this is an ICT system of a special importance within which special categories of personal data are being processed. As such, it implies the necessity to undertake all measures stipulated by the Law on Information Security and the Law on Personal Data Protection in phases of its development and implementation. SHARE Foundation explored these measures to a great detail in its Guidebook on Personal Data Protection and Guidebook on ICT Systems of Special Importance .

By any means, it is necessary to fully implement privacy by design and security by design principles, which entail the following regarding the access to a system:

Every system user has their own access account
Every system user has the authorisation to process only the data necessary for their line of work
Access passwords are not published via an open network
A standard on password complexity is put in place
The number of incorrect password entries is limited

Our accidental discovery on Google revealed a breach of security and data protection standards within the health system. The state of emergency instituted due to pandemic cannot serve as an excuse for a job poorly done, nor can it serve as an obstacle for conducting an immediate detailed analyses of compliance of Covid-19 Information system with security standards.

Tech Giants Urged to Preserve Blocked Content About Virus

Posted on April 22, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

A total of 75 signatories, including Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, have signed a letter asking social media and content-sharing platforms to preserve all data they’ve blocked or removed during the coronavirus pandemic and make it public for researchers and journalists in the future.

“We understand that many platforms have increased their reliance on automated content moderation during the pandemic, while simultaneously removing misinformation and apparently inaccurate information about COVID-19 at an unprecedented rate,” the letter, published on Wednesday, says.

However, the signatories argue that this data will be of great importance to researchers, journalists as well as people working in public health.

“This is also an unprecedented opportunity to study how online information flows ultimately affect health outcomes, and to evaluate the macro- and micro-level consequences of relying on automation to moderate content in a complex and evolving information environment,” the letter reads.

The signatories ask companies to preserve all data on content removal including but not limited to information about which takedowns did not receive human reviews, whether users tried to appeal takedowns as well as reports that were not acted upon.

They also ask companies to produce transparency reports with information about content blocking and removal related to the novel coronavirus as well as to allow researchers and journalists to access this data, recognizing that privacy will need to be ensured.

“It will be crucial to develop safeguards to address the privacy issues raised by new or longer data retention and by the sharing of information with third parties, but the need for immediate preservation is urgent,” the letter further reads.

The letter will be sent to social media giants and companies including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Pinterest, Wikimedia, Reddit, Vimeo, Verizon Media and Microsoft.

Apart from BIRN, other organisations that signed the letter included the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, Syrian Archive, PEN America and others.

Ever since the COVID-19 outbreak started, a lot of information about the virus has spread online, including potential disinformation, fake news and conspiracy theories.

In a bid to curb this disinformation, many social media outlets have started deleting such content. At the end of March, for example, Facebook deleted a video from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in which he claimed that hydroxychloroquine was effective in treating the COVID-19.

Twitter also deleted a tweet about a homemade treatment by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, while YouTube banned conspiracy theory videos linking COVID-19 symptoms to 5G networks.

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