Facebook, Google Urged to Appoint Agents in Serbia

SHARE Foundation said on Tuesday that it has sent letters to 20 companies, including Facebook, Twitter and Google, asking them to appoint a representative in Serbia to whom all questions related to personal data processing can be addressed.

The NGO said that Serbia’s new Law on Personal Data Protection, which will come into force on August 21 this year, says that almost all major IT companies must appoint representatives in the country.

“Bearing in mind that Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and other IT giants process citizens’ data in Serbia in order to provide services, they have the obligation to appoint a local representative,” it said.

It added that the policy of most of these companies is to not see Serbia as a country in which EU legislation is applicable, which leads to a situation in which Serbians’ rights in relation to personal data are hardly guaranteed at all.

“On the other hand, if Facebook or Google had representatives in Serbia, the assurance that citizens could exercise their rights or even have the option of initiating a dispute before the relevant [legal] authorities would be considerably enhanced,” SHARE concluded.

The Serbian NGO also sent its letter to Amazon, Snap Inc – Snapchat, AliExpress, Viber, Yandex, Booking, Airbnb, Ryanair, Wizzair, eSky, Yahoo, Netflix, Twitch, Kupujem prodajem (Buying Selling), Toptal, GoDaddy and Upwork.

US ‘Cyber Warriors’ Help Balkan Allies Resist Hackers

Amid continuing fears about cyber threats to democracy, the US is deploying so-called “cyber warriors” to a number of friendly countries in Eastern Europe including Ukraine, Montenegro and North Macedonia, to help them resist attacks.

US Cyber Command, which coordinates cyberspace operations to defend US interests, is also cooperating with the authorities in those countries to prevent potential threats, the US embassy in Montenegro told BIRN.

“US European Command and US Cyber Command have worked closely with NATO ally Montenegro conducting cyber cooperation to increase interoperability, share best practices, and deter malign influence on the democratic processes of our allies, partners, and the United States,” the embassy in Podgorica said.

It declined to reveal operational details and technical aspects of the engagement.

But Brigadier General Timothy Haugh, commander of Cyber Command’s national mission force, said recently that as part of an operation internally called “Synthetic Theology”, Cyber Command had deployed “cyber warriors” to Ukraine, North Macedonia, and Montenegro to help defend those countries’ networks, and collect intelligence on adversaries, IT news website CyberScoop reported on May 7.

During a round table at the Integrated Cyber Center and Joint Operations Center in Fort Meade, Maryland, Haugh “said these kinds of partnerships will continue to grow”, the report said.

“When we look to do partnerships overseas … we want to do that anywhere where there’s a potential adversary that would also target our electoral systems,” General Haugh was quoted as saying.

The report noted that the US intended to actively thwart possible election interference from countries like Russia, “which the US intelligence community has determined sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential election”.

Cyber hackers linked to Russia have wrought havoc with institutions in a number of Western countries in recent years.

As BIRN previously reported, the notorious Russian cyber-espionage group Fancy Bear hacked its way into Montenegrin institutions in 2017, sending spearphishing emails signed sometimes as coming from NATO.

Montenegro has since tightened up cyber security defences and formed a specialised police taskforce to fight cybercrime.

The US Cyber Command official website on October 2 2018 reported that its members worked alongside cyber defenders within the government of Montenegro for some weeks to build up its cyber defence capabilities.

“It’s important to point out that cyber security cooperation strengthens partnerships and interoperability,” the US embassy to Montenegro underlined in its reply to BIRN, asked about US cyber cooperation with this Balkan country.

It added that the US Department of Defense works closely with various allies and partners “to counter those who attempt to undermine our democratic institutions”.

The purpose of the cooperation, it added, is “purely defensive – ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their networks”.

In another Balkan country, North Macedonia, the town of Veles became internationally notorious for the lucrative online ventures of some of its younger inhabitants, who used the 2016 US presidential election to earn money by promoting fake or misleading news in support of Donald Trump.

In March 2018, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg mentioned North Macedonia by name as a source of fake news.

Facebook later closed 212 pages in Kosovo and North Macedonia for sharing unacceptable material on politics and religion. In its press release, the company said some of these online operations were found to be connected with Iran and Russia.

OSCE Criticises ‘Abuse’ of Bulgarian Investigative Journalist

The media freedom arm of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, said on Tuesday that it is concerned by the “verbal and physical intimidation” of Bulgarian investigative journalist Dimitar Stoyanov of Bivol.bg when he tried to approach a lawyer for an interview the previous day.

“Journalists must be free to pursue their job without fear or abuse,” said a message posted on the OSCE media freedom Twitter account.

Stoyanov posted a video on Monday showing him being pushed and threatened by a private security guard while trying to approach Bulgarian lawyer Momchil Mondeshki during what appears to be a convention in Hanover in Germany.

Lawyer Mondeshki was a key figure in the so-called ‘Yanevagate’ scandal in 2015, which erupted after a series of leaked audio recordings published by Bivol.ge revealed alleged influence-peddling within the higher ranks of the Bulgarian judiciary.

In the recordings, a voice identified as Mondeshki talks to former Supreme Court of Cassation president Vladimira Yaneva about her covering-up sensitive documents. They also discuss the influence that high-ranking politicians have on the judiciary.

The Bulgarian prosecution did not charge any high-ranking politician or magistrate implicated in wrongdoing by the recordings as the tapes were deemed to have been manipulated.

Monday’s incident was not the first time that Bivol’s journalists have faced intimidation.

In September 2018, Stoyanov was apprehended by Bulgarian police alongside Attila Biro from the Romanian investigative platform Rise Project. The two journalists were taken into custody by local police near Pernik, south of Sofia, causing an outcry in both their home countries, as well as abroad.

They were arrested as they tried to film the subjects of their investigation burning documents related to the misuse of EU funds by consultancies and companies connected to the Bulgarian GP Group, a construction firm.

The international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in a 2018 report that investigative journalism still faces serious obstacles in Bulgaria.

FB Page Attacking Serbian Media ‘Linked’ to Breitbart

A Facebook page whose incendiary comments against independent journalists, disseminated to its 87,000 followers, have drawn criminal complaints is linked to a recently established Serbian website called Breitbart.rs.

The Facebook page, “Serbia Our Country” (Srbija naša zemlja), sports the orange square logo of Breitbart with the letter “B” substituted with “S”.

The section providing more details about the page has a link to Breitbart.rs, which was registered in February but has no content.

Breitbart News Network is a far-right syndicated American news, opinion and commentary website founded in mid-2007 by conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart.

“Serbia Our Country” has launched ferocious attacks on independent journalists, among others. It labelled Nedim Sejdinovic, former president of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina, NDNV, a “Muslim extremist” and “Serb-hater”, for example, after which Sejdinovic filed a criminal complaint against the anonymous individuals running the page.

“I gave a statement to the Special Prosecution for High-Tech Crime and submitted all the necessary material related to the death threats and other felonies committed in this case,” Sejdinovic told BIRN.

The regional TV station N1 has also filed a criminal complaint for “endangering safety, threats, slanders and insults” against N1 employees over the Facebook page “Serbia Our Country”.

The Facebook page, among other things, accuses the independent media of receiving cash from “the criminal Clinton clan” in the US and from liberal hate figure billionaire George Soros. It accuses them of working to “destabilize Serbia”.

[Serbian nationalists bitterly resent former US president Bill Clinton for his role in the NATO-led air war that forced Serbia out of Kosovo in the late 1990s.]

The page has also called opposition politicians “mercenaries“ and accused them of “setting fire to our only home, Serbia”.

The identity of the individual that registered the related website, Breitbart.rs, is undisclosed. However, on March 28, Serbian businessman Bogoljub Pjescic said on Twitter that he was temporarily at the helm.

“Everything I do is transparent. I am only temporarily leading the future Breitbart Serbia,“ Pjescic tweeted.

Contacted by BIRN one day later, Pjescic said that he was no longer the chief of Breitbart.rs but refused to say who was now in charge.

“I cannot give any contacts without consent … I signed a non-disclosure agreement,” Pjescic told BIRN.

Pjescic claims to be a US citizen with good connections and a journalist. In recent days he has been involved in arguments with prominent Serbian journalists and editors on social networks.

Despite claiming to no longer be involved with Breitbart.rs, he has claimed that the page had 3.2 million views over the last seven days.

BIRN could not independently verify Pjescic’s claims.

The page “Serbia Our Country and the Breitbart.rs website do not list any contacts. The page administrators did not reply to BIRN’s questions sent over Facebook.

Breitbart News Network did not reply to BIRN’s request for comment by the time of publication.

Since President Aleksandar Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party came to power in 2012, Serbia has seen a surge of internet trolls and pages on social networks praising the government and attacking its critics, free media and the opposition in general.

Facebook has vowed to clamp down hard on pages spreading hate speech and racist views and has closed a number of pages in the Balkans suspected of misbehaving.

Facebook Clampdown Hits Kosovo, North Macedonia Spammers

Facebook’s widely trumpeted clampdown on far-right and racist pages has affected several hundred accounts from Kosovo and North Macedonia that have been closed for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”.

In a press release issued on Wednesday, Facebook said it had removed 2,632 pages, groups and accounts for misbehaving on Facebook and Instagram.

The move comes two weeks after a white racist livestreamed his terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on Facebook.

In the Balkan region, Facebook said it closed 212 pages in Kosovo and North Macedonia for sharing unacceptable material on politics and religion, for example.

“Some of the profiles that were removed might belong to radical or far-right groups that may be rooted in the Balkans or come from outside, and whose hidden goal is to radicalize people,” Andrej Petkovski, from the Belgrade-based think tank Share, told BIRN.

Facebook said some of these online operations were found to be connected with Iran and Russia. It stressed that the profiles were not removed just for their content but also for falsely claiming to represent political communities in Australia, Britain and the United States.

Petkovski said these online radicals were often good at concealing their agendas and luring readers.

“At first glance, these profiles might not seem radical at all, and not contain explicit content and hate speech. They usually focus on posting texts on life style, healthcare, diets and exercises. Sports news is used frequently to lure predominantly male readers,” he explained.

“Once they lure followers, they gradually target them specifically and start feeding them with more explicit content,” he added.

Facebook said it had informed the local authorities about its actions, though neither North Macedonian nor Kosovo police confirmed this to BIRN on Thursday.

A Skopje-based new media expert, Bojan Kordalov, told BIRN this was not the first time Facebook had clamped down on alleged extremists, but it was welcome that it was being more open about it.

“It is a good thing that they have become much more transparent about it, issuing regular press releases, to show that they are making efforts to curb fake news and other misconduct online,” he said.

“Whether some radical groups were discovered or not is up to the authorities to determine, but it is a fact that in the past we have had many cases [of extremist sites] that in the beginning concealed their true intent by posting neutral and popular content,” Kordalov explained.

He suggested that many of the people implicated in these bad practices “do not know the big picture” and are in it purely for the promise of quick profit.

Petkovski and Kardalov both said the countries in the Balkans are generally unprepared to tackle the dangers stemming from the online distribution of fake news, radical ideologies and hate speech.

“All the regulations from the penal code that are applicable to the traditional media should also apply for the online sphere, while making all efforts to preserve the freedom of speech,” Kordalov advised.

Kosovo and North Macedonia have in recent years been named as hubs of spamming and trolling activities.

Western media reports said North Macedonian spammers were deeply involved in spreading fake news during the last presidential election campaign in the US, which Donald Trump won.

In March 2018, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg even mentioned North Macedonia by name as a source of fake news.

A BIRN and BBC investigation published last year said that militant Christian campaigner Jim Dowson was tied to a web of sites that were training Serbian far-right activists on how to win the information war regarding Kosovo. Dawson has denied any association to such activities, however.

Serbia’s Anti-Govt Protests Leave Tweeters Bitterly Divided

As anti-government protests continue in Serbia – and as the mainstream media mostly follows the government line – Twitter has become a significant battlefield where it’s still possible to freely exchange opinions. 

With that in mind, Milos Resimic, a Ph.D. candidate at Central European University and a consultant at Government Transparency Institute, has collected 10-20,000 tweets after each week and has analyzed the structure of the network.

The weekly anti-government protests started on December 8, 2018. On March 16, citizens stormed the building of the Serbian national broadcaster RTS , and were forcefully expelled by police.

Resimic’s analysis of last weekend’s protests, which turned violent, showed that while the Twitter community focused on the same topic, there was little if any conversation between the opposed groups.

It revealed a clear polarization and the lack of communication between the pro-government users, shown above in green, and the anti-government communities, shown in yellow.

The anti-government community is bigger, more inter-connected and diverse than the pro-government community as reflected in Resimic interactive graph.

“We can notice that opposition politicians and the accounts of opposition parties are important for information diffusion in the anti-government community. This community is diverse and highly inter-connected. This is completely different from the pro-government community, which is highly centralized around two or three users,” he explained.

This motivated Resimic to look in more detail at the pro-government users, so he scraped 6,000 tweets of 30 randomly selected users. The resulting network was almost entirely based on retweets – 98.6 percent – which he said indicates bot-like behavior.

Resimic also highlighted that some independent media, including Balkan Insight, are also visible in the network.

“Balkan Insight forms a separate cluster (blue), and their reports about the protests tend to be retweeted the most by their own cluster (mostly non-Serbian speaking audience), but also by the anti-government cluster and to a lesser extent by the pro-government cluster,” he said.

“Prominent, especially in the last protest network, is KRIK, which was praised in the online community for its professional coverage of the protest,” he concluded, referring to the investigative journalism network.

Facebook Shuts Moldova Officials’ ‘Fake News’ Accounts

Facebook Newsroom has closed 168 Facebook accounts, 28 pages and eight Instagram accounts in Moldova, some belonging to government officials, because it suspected they were spreading fake news, political propaganda and misinformation ahead of elections.

“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our manual review found that some of this activity was linked to employees of the Moldovan government,” Facebook Newsroom said in a press release.

Facebook noted that the fake news targeted citizens of Moldova and the action itself originated in Moldova, adding that it “used a combination of fake accounts and some authentic accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing”.

Ahead of parliamentary elections on February 24, Facebook – which has come under fire for failing to monitor how it was being used – is paying more attention to Moldova.

The country is notorious for issues related to Russian and domestic political propaganda.

Facebook said about 54,000 accounts followed at least one of these pages and around 1,300 accounts followed at least one of the Instagram accounts that were closed.

Around 20,000 US dollars had been spent on adverts on Facebook and Instagram. The money was paid in US dollars, euros and Romanian leu.

Facebook noticed that the accounts shared manipulated photos and divisive narratives.

Some of their activity apparently impersonated the page of a local fact-checking organization, StopFals, which has called out other pages for spreading fake news. The Independent Press Association in Moldova, API, manages it.

The director of API, Petru Macovei, told BIRN it was “a very good thing” that Facebook had shut down these accounts. “Maybe a little late, but it’s good anyway. I’m sure this will to some extent discourage the trolls and those who control them from behind.”

Government officials have not responded to the accusations of involvement as yet, he noted.

A local application, Trolless, developed by a local initiative in Moldova, was responsible for prompting Facebook’s action.

They said they were “very happy that our project has finally received the appreciation and attention of the Facebook administration.

“After a conversation with Facebook, I learned that they had started investigating Moldova quite some time ago, and had even formed a team to follow the February elections,” the creator of the Trolless app, Victor Spinu, told BIRN.

He said Facebook used the app to help it identify the troll profiles and Pages and spy the connections between them.

“We will continue to work with FB’s cybersecurity department and continue to fight this phenomenon,” Spinu added.

Victims of the trolls and their pages have included independent media organisations in Moldova.

The director of the Centre of Investigative Journalism in Moldova, CIJM, Cornelia Cozonac, was one target, possibly because her investigations have often touched on corruption in Moldova. The media outlet and its affiliated news portals have been under troll pressure for years.

Trolls made a clone of her account and posted different messages in her name, aiming to discredit her personally as well as her work. The messages were taken on by obscure news website and rolled over by other trolls on social media.

“At the same time, there were cyber attacks on the web platform of CIJM, anticoruptie.md, which publishes investigations of all of the candidates in the election. We are trying to cope with these attacks, but it is difficult,” she told BIRN.

Facebook Launches Content Review Centre in Bulgaria

The largest global social media network, Facebook, is launching a content review centre in Sofia, Bulgaria, this week.

The news, first announced by Capital weekly, was confirmed to BIRN by the Head of Corporate Communications for Central and Eastern Europe of the company, Jan Sciegienny, on Tuesday.

“Today, we are announcing the opening of a new content review center in Sofia in partnership with TELUS International – a leading global operations service provider for Community Care Solution”, he wrote in an email response to BIRN’s inquiry.

The center aims to recruit 150 people within one year. They will be responsible for supporting content review in multiple languages, including Turkish, Kazakh, Georgian and Russian.

The reviewers will be looking at potentially violating material that has been flagged by the users of the platform and the artificial intelligence technology, employed by the company to detect harmful content.

“We are investing heavily in more people and better technology to make sure that Facebook is both a safe place and somewhere people can freely discuss different points of view,” Sciegienny added.

The company moved on to expand its safety and security team as part of a strategy to contain rising public criticism and concerns about flaws in its data protection mechanisms that lead to alleged usage of the platform to sway key votes, including the Brexit referendum in the UK and the last US Presidential elections.

Over the past year, the content reviewers and safety specialists employed by the company doubled, to 30,000 people, the company announced.

Additionally, Facebook announced on Monday it is expanding its political advertising transparency policies in the run-up to the European Parliament elections and is opening Rapid Response offices in Dublin and Singapore to “tackle misinformation in advance”.

Fears of Russian meddling in key elections sparked calls from EU leaders, notably French President Emmanuel Macron, for an increased regulatory role of the EU and member states over the internet.

On Monday, Facebook’s head of global public relations and ex-deputy PM of Great Britain Nick Clegg spoke at an invitation-only event in Brussels, addressing these concerns.

“There is a clear role here for the EU to demonstrate a middle path — a model that combines the dynamism of Silicon Valley with the regulatory rigor of Brussels,” he said, quoted by Politico.

Bosnia Blows Millions of Euros on Official Limos

Bosnian state institutions and companies last year launched tenders for official vehicles worth more than 93 million Bosnian marks – equal to about 46 million euros.

The total value of the tenders actually completed in 2018 was over 19 million euros and bought some 926 vehicles, data from the BIRN BiH database indicate.

This amount includes all vehicles procured last year, including trucks, ambulances and police cars.

Just over 10.6 million KM – 5 million euros – was spent on purchasing 329 official limousines whose price averaged 32,000 KM, about 16,000 euros.

The Medical Faculty in Mostar, in southwest Bosnia, bought the most expensive passenger car. Purchased from the MRM Company from Ljubuski, it cost close to 100,000 KM, including tax. The faculty director, Milanko Bevanda, did not respond to BIRN’s inquiry concerning this procurement by the time of publication.

Mostar University and its members launched eight tenders worth more than 420,000 KM during 2018.

The MRM Company won two of those tenders as the only bidder. The same company won most tenders in Bosnia during 2018, and earned 5.3 million KM through 25 tenders.

MRM from Ljubuski was the only bidder in as many as 96 per cent of the open tenders, or lots, that it won during 2018. There was only one bidder in 87 per cent of all the tenders completed in 2018.

Besides MRM, the biggest tenders were won by Lada Auto Banja Luka (2.6 million KM), Porsche BH Sarajevo (2.1 million KM), Guma M Mostar (1.9 million KM) and Autokomerc V.S. Banja Luka (1.6 million KM).

Only Porsche BH answered BIRN BiH’s queries by the time of publication saying that the company fully complied with procurement  legislation and honoured strict internal policies.

Skoda Superb is one of the most frequently bought vehicles by Bosnian politicians. The District Heating Company from Doboj bought one last year for just over 45,000 euros – including tax, the second most expensive passenger car bought last year.

The director of District Heating, Sladjan Jovic, did not respond fully to BIRN BiH’s inquiry about why such an expensive vehicle was bought, who would use it, or whether they could have purchased a cheaper vehicle.

He did say, however: “The vehicle will be used as an official vehicle for the needs of the Company in accordance with the Company Work Plan and other programming and planning documents of the Company.”

BIRN BiH noted nearly 100 tenders, which make up almost 15 percent of all tenders, for providing detailed vehicle specifications or precise dimensions or features of a certain vehicle, which Public Procurement Law in Bosnia prohibits.

The procurement of 66 ambulances also started last year, while tenders for 28 of them were completed.

Just over a million euros was spent purchasing those vehicles, which was only a fifth of the total sum spent on passenger vehicles.

Used ambulances were bought through three tender procedures.

Officials sought the purchase of even fewer fire trucks – only 35. Some 6.2 million KM – about 3.1 million euros – was spent on buying 161 police vehicles last year.

The total of purchased police vehicles, fire trucks and ambulances was fewer than passenger cars, and their total price was also smaller than the total price of the passenger vehicles.

Read more:

Dodik’s Luxury Limo Stands Out in Bosnian Election

Bosnian Officials Spend 4.5 Million Euros on Vehicles

Dodik’s Luxury Limo Stands Out in Bosnian Election

Among the many politicians driving around Bosnia in the campaign for the general elections on October 7, Milorad Dodik, Bosnian Serb president and candidate for the Serbian seat on Bosnia’s state presidency is riding the costliest limo of all, according to a BIRN database of cars in government ownership.

The current president of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity, Republika Srpska, RS,  has listed a Mercedes 500 from 2010 at his disposal, which his office procured for 125,000 euros, based on latest official documents on car maintenance and insurance.

Office of the president of Republika Srpska also has an Audi A8L from 2011 which was procured for 85.000 euros.

The second most expensive passenger car in the BIRN register of official vehicles is a Volkswagen Phaeton from 2013, worth 109,000 euros, which belongs to the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers – the state government.

The car is available to the Chair of the Council, Denis Zvizdic, from the main Bosniak Party of Democratic Action, SDA, who is standing as a candidate for the state-level parliament.

Zeljka Cvijanovic, now RS Prime Minister and a candidate for the post of RS president, has at her disposal two Audi A8s, worth more than 100,000 euros. The RS assembly’s General Secretariat spent over 18,000 euros on car tires this year.

The members of Bosnia’s state presidency all have expensive cars. Four of the ten most expensive passenger cars in the Register of Official Cars belong to the presidency.

Three expensive Audi A8s, each worth about 100,000 euros, form part of a fleet of 36 cars worth 1.7 million euros, available for the three members of the presidency and for two candidates standing for this year’s new mandate – Mladen Ivanic and Dragan Covic.

Bosnian Foreign Minister Igor Crnadak, a candidate for the RS assembly, from the opposition Party of Democratic Progress, has an Audi A8L valued at 75,000 euros.

Bosnian Justice minister Josip Grubesa, a candidate for the state parliament from the main Croat party, the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ BiH, has an Audi A6, worth 50,000 euros.

The BMW of Bosnian Security minister Dragan Mektic, who is running for a seat in the state parliament, has the same value.

Mirko Sarovic, Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, from the Serbian Democratic Party, SDS, drives a slightly cheaper Audi A6 than his party colleague Mektic.

The head of the public roads company in the RS, Putevi Srpske, Nenad Nesic, has a luxury Skoda Superb, worth a bit over 30,000 euros.

Nesic is a candidate for the state parliament from the Democratic People’s Alliance, a coalition alley of Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD.

In 2018, this company bought two more cars, a Skoda Superb and a Hyundai Tucson, and 16 others vehicles, bringing its fleet up to a total of 44 passenger vehicles.

The BIRN database, containing a register of vehicles owned by institutions and public companies, and showing their average cost – around 25,000 euros – can be seen here.

Read more:

Bosnian Officials Spend 4.5 Million Euros on Vehicles

Bosnian Serbs to Protest Over Officials’ Luxury Limos

Bosnia elections 2018 

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