Author: Ivana Jeremic

Glitched Online Registration System for COVID-19 Vaccination Confuses Croatia

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

As more doses of COVID-19 vaccines finally arrive in Croatia, problems continue when it comes to registration, especially through the national online platform, CijepiSe [Get vaccinated].

“I expected the CijepiSe platform to work because the pandemic has lasted such a long time,“ Mia Biberovic, executive editor at the Croatian tech website Netokracija, told BIRN.

“I assumed the preparations were done early enough,“ she said, concluding that alas, this was not the case. As a consequence, she noted, a small number of people who applied online for a jab are being invited to get vaccinated.

For days, media have reported on problems with the platform, which cost 4.4 million kuna, or about 572,000 euros. On Friday, media reported that the data of the first 4,000 people who applied for vaccination via the platform during its test phase in February had been deleted.

The health ministry then denied reports about the deletion, and said the data relevant for making vaccination appointments had not connected in the case of 200 citizens who booked vaccinations during the test trial.

“The problem is, first, that the test version came when it [the system] was not functional yet. Second, [in the test phase] there were no remarks about the protection of users’ data, i.e. how the user data left there would be used,” Biberovic, who was also among those who applied during the test trial, noted.

“As far as I understood, the data was not deleted but could not be seen anywhere because it was incomplete … So they are not deleted, but again, they are not usable, which is even more bizarre,“ Biberovic added. “This is certainly a risk because citizens do not know how their data is being used.”

Vaccination appointments in Croatia can be ordered through the CijepiSe online platform, a call centre or via general practitioners, and all those who apply should be put on a single list. However, direct contact with a doctor has turned out to be the best way to get a vaccination appointment.

The ministry on Saturday said 198,274 citizens have been registered via the CijepiSe platform, of whom 45,416 have been vaccinated. But around 40,000 of these were not invited through the platform but by direct invitation of general practitioners.

Zvonimir Sostar, head of the Zagreb-based Andrija Stampar Teaching Institute of Public Health, stated on Saturday that the platform was not functioning in the capital, and that they would change the vaccination registration system, advising citizens to register via general practitioners.

Shortly after, the ministry promised that “everyone registered in the CijepiSe system will receive their vaccination appointment”.

“Maybe the platform is not functioning the way we wanted, but it functions well enough to cope with the challenges of vaccination. I read in the papers that the system of vaccination has collapsed. That’s not true! We are increasing the daily number of vaccinations,” Health Minister Vili Beros said on Sunday.

However, the Conflict of Interest Commission, an independent state body tasked with preventing conflicts of interest between private and public interests in the public sector, confirmed on Tuesday that it has opened a case against Beros. It comes after the media reported that the minister has ties to the company that designed the CijepiSe platform. The minister denies any wrongdoing.

Media Freedom Deteriorated in Europe Amid Pandemic, Report Warns

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Reporters Without Borders, RSF, released its annual Press Freedom Index report on Tuesday with a warning that media freedom has deteriorated across the world during the coronavirus pandemic, with governments using the crisis to assert more control over the press.

In 2020, there was a “dramatic deterioration in people’s access to information and an increase in obstacles to news coverage”, the RSF report says.

“The coronavirus pandemic has been used as grounds to block journalists’ access to information sources and reporting in the field,” it adds.

The situation deteriorated significantly in some countries in Central and South East Europe in 2020, says the report, which ranks 180 countries around the world according to their level of media freedom, evaluating media pluralism, independence from government, national legislation and how safe journalists are in each country.

In Hungary (92nd out of 180, down three positions from RSF’s 2019 rankings), independent media came under attack in 2020 from Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, which “continued to extend its hegemony over the Hungarian media landscape and inspire other European countries such as Slovenia and Poland”, according to the report.

Legislation passed to criminalise disinformation about the pandemic “threatened journalists with prosecution on charges of disseminating fake news and ‘blocking the government’s anti-pandemic efforts’ and imposed additional curbs on their already limited access to state-held information”.

Poland (down two positions at 64th), Slovenia (down four at 36th), Czechia (in the same position at 40th) and Slovakia (down two at 35th) suffered some of the same problems.

“After consolidating its control of the state broadcast media, the government [in Poland] is pursuing its ‘repolonisation’ of the privately-owned media with the declared goal of influencing their editorial policies or, in other words, censoring them,” the RSF report says.

The situation is possibly worse in the Balkans, according to the report.

“The various press freedom violations have contributed to a sharp deterioration in the EU/Balkans Abuses indicator. Acts of violence have more than doubled in the region, compared with a 17% deterioration worldwide,” it says.

In Serbia (in the same position at 93rd), President Aleksandar Vucic’s administration is setting an example for other countries in the region with increasing government control on the media, daily verbal attacks on journalists and legislation to limit press freedom during the pandemic.

“Serbia is a country with weak institutions that is prey to fake news spread by government-backed sensational media, a country where journalists are subjected to almost daily attacks that increasingly come from the ruling elite and pro-government media,” the report says.

“The government used the coronavirus crisis to pass draconian legislation – later repealed – under which journalist Ana Lalic was held overnight in a cell in April 2020 after being arrested at her home for a report about a local hospital,” it adds.

The government of Albania (up one position at 83rd) took control of two independent TV channels on the grounds that their owner had been charged with drug trafficking, while in Montenegro (up one at 104th), investigative reporter Jovo Martinovic has continued to be prosecuted on allegedly trumped-up charges.

In Bosnia (in the same position at 58th) and Kosovo (down eight at 78th), media remain divided along ethnic lines, like most other institutions in both countries. The report notes that nationalistic discourse increased in 2020, creating a hostile environment for press freedom.

In Croatia (up three at 56th), journalists who investigate corruption, organised crime or war crimes are often subjected to harassment campaigns, according to the report.

RSF notes that in North Macedonia (up two at 90) senior government officials continued to threaten and insult media outlets, while cyber-harassment and verbal attacks against journalists increased on social media.

In Bulgaria (down one at 112), the lowest EU country in the rankings, “the situation of the media is very worrying because no one is interested in investigating or condemning violence against journalists”, the report says.

In Romania (in the same position at 48th) and Moldova (up two at 89th), access to information remains a major problem for journalists, particularly during the pandemic.

Turkey (up one at 153th) has one of the worst record for press freedom not only in Europe but around the world.

“All means possible are used [by the Turkish government] to eliminate pluralism,” the report says.

It notes that the government controls 90 per cent of the national media, and uses severe censorship and discriminatory practices in order to marginalise and criminalise its media critics.

Albania Prosecutors Investigate Socialists’ Big-Brother-Style Database

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Albania’s Special Structure Against Corruption and Organized Crime has summoned Andi Bushati and Armand Shkullaku, owners and editors of Lapsi.al news website, for questioning about a database, purportedly created by the Socialist Party, which contains the names of 910,000 voters in the Tirana region, along with personal data, including employment and family background records in what critics call a massive tracking system.

Bushati said prosecutors asked him where the information came from, and said he had refused to reveal his source, calling the meeting “a short meeting without much substance” while suggesting that the prosecutors should instead investigate how the personal data of the citizens ended up in the hands of a political party.

The prosecutors have not inspected any party office or commented publicly on what they are investigating.

The news about the database revealed last Sunday sent waves across the political spectrum and the population.

Ruling Socialist Party officials acknowledge that the database exists, but insist the data was provided voluntarily by citizens. They have also claimed that the published excerpts are not theirs.

Socialist parliamentary Group Taulant Balla immediately called the news “Lies!”

“The Socialist Party has built its database over years in door-to-door communication with the people,” he added. Days later, he claimed that the database published was not the one belonging to the Socialist Party.

Edi Rama, the Prime Minister, has acknowledged that his party has a “system of patronage” of voters but said their database is more complex and that the one leaked is probably an old one. Other Socialists have denied that the leaked database is theirs at all.

The opposition Democratic Party claims the data included in the database was stolen by the Socialist Party via the government service website E-Albania, where people apply for different services.

Many citizens who have had access to the database claim the data there are those they supplied to state institutions, and say the database seems well updated.

This E-Albania website was used by the government of Prime Minister Rama to issue permission to go outside during the national lockdown in spring 2020. In their forms, citizens had to provide phone numbers and email addresses.

The database, which BIRN had seen, contains some 910,000 entries of names, addresses, birthday, personal ID cards, employment and other data.

For each voter, a party official known as “patronazhist” a word derived from French patronage, is assigned. If they want to know where somebody works, a search in the database can provide that information.

For each voter, there is data on how they voted in the past and what their likely preference is today. In a separate column titled “comments”, party officials write notes on voters.

In one, a party official notes that “the voter requested employment of his wife” while in another, “the voter didn’t thank [the party] for obtaining his house deeds].

Property issues are widespread in Albania and various governments have been criticized for handing over ownership titles as electoral campaign bribes. The issue of such deeds in elections is currently forbidden.

In several cases, officials noted that some voters do not participate in elections because they are “Jehovah Witnesses,” or “extremist Muslims who are not permitted by religion to vote”.

In one case, the comment indicates that voters’ social media pages are checked by officials: “By investigating his Facebook profile, we can conclude he votes for SP,” a note reads while in another case it reads: “This one has previously voted for PDIU party; should be kept under monitoring.”

A note for a voter identified as business owner reads: “We should contact him for his employees”. In another case: The mother of the voter is employed in the municipality”.

Even family conflicts do not escape the observing eye of the party: “Xxx is relative of xxx but they are not on speaking terms,” a note reads.

The Albanian Helsinki Committee, a rights group based in Tirana, underlined that systematic monitoring of voters by a political party may violate the secrecy of the ballot and is especially concerning if done without a voter’s consent.

On Friday, 12 rights organisations called on the authorities to investigate the matter after indicating that at least the law on the Protection of Personal Data had been violated.

“This case is the illegal collection, elaboration and distribution of personal data of some 1 million citizens without their consent,” the statement reads.

While scores of citizens are interested to know which Socialist Party official is tracking them, Big Brother Albanian style apparently does not lack a note of comedy.

In the database, Socialist Party head and PM Rama, is shown as a voter who works at the Councils of Ministers and is under the “patronage” of Elvis Husha, a party official. Husha is under patronage of another party official.

Journalist Andi Bushati, who first exposed the database, said chances are slim that the prosecutors will do their work. “I don’t really believe that the prosecutors will find the truth of this. When a crime appears, it remains without author,” he commented.

Croatian Journalists Union Deplores ‘Intimidating’ Rise in Lawsuits

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

At least 924 lawsuits against the media and journalists are active in Croatia, in which plaintiffs are demanding almost 78.5 million kunas in total, or some 10 million euros, which marks an increase in the number of lawsuits compared to last year, when the number was 905, the latest annual survey done by the Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, reveals.

Hrvoje Zovko, HND president, said on Friday that such numbers “show that the judicial persecution of the media and journalists in Croatia is still ongoing and that there is no end in sight”.

He added “It is important to note that the actual number [of lawsuits] is higher because we received this data from only 23 media. We want to clearly warn the domestic and international public that lawsuits are the most common means of intimidating journalists and the media to give up serious investigative stories.”

He said that what was also particularly worrying is that top state officials, “local sheriffs”, and even judges are filing lawsuits.

HND reported that of the total number of 924 lawsuits, 892 are civil lawsuits for alleged violations of honour and reputation, conducted against publishers, editors and journalists for publishing texts and articles. The other 32 are criminal lawsuits.

The Hanza media group, to which the popular daily Jutarnji list belongs, reported 479 active court proceedings to the HND. Right behind is the Styria group, which publishes Vecernji list, with 203 lawsuits.

“Many of these proceedings involve SLAPP or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation lawsuits, aimed at censoring, intimidating and silencing critics by burdening them with court proceedings – a serious and dangerous mechanism that threatens media freedom,” HND said in a press release.

This is the third time that HND has carried out such research. Concerned about the number of lawsuits against the media, it asks local media outlets to inform them of the situation in their newsrooms.

According to the first HND’s poll, in February 2019, which drew responses from 19 outlets, there were 1,163 active court cases in Croatia. Warning about the dangers of this practice, in March that year reporters and media outlets staged a protest in Zagreb.

Last year’s data showed 905 such cases.

As BIRN reported, many governments in the region, in trying to control the pandemic narrative, adopted draconian tools, muzzling media, arresting critics and bombarding social media giants with requests to take down posts and shut down accounts.

In its November 2020 COVID and Free Speech report, the Council of Europe rights body cautioned that restrictions introduced during the pandemic could give rise to an increase in civil lawsuits, particularly defamation cases.

Facebook Reveals Cost of Albanian Parties’ and Candidates’ Election Ads

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Facebook has for the first time published a report on what Albanian parties have spent on online advertising on the social media giant during the current parliamentary election campaign.

According to the report, the biggest parties predictably spent more money in sponsored posts for political content than the others.

The biggest advertiser was the ruling Socialist Party, which so far posted 394 ads costing 21,907 US dollars, followed by the main opposition centre-right Democratic Party, which spent 11,536 dollars on 81 ads.

According to BIRN’s calculations, 123,152 dollars was spent on political and social advertising by the parties in all. However, its data show that only 113,252 dollars were actually spent by parties, candidates or sites that distribute political ads. The rest of the ads were from the media and from companies that have been wrongly categorized by Facebook’s algorithm.

Gent Progni a web developer, told BIRN that the total amount spent by each party on FB seems quite low for a target audience of two million people, but the figures change if every candidate or other Facebook page campaigning for a political party is counted.

“The amounts are small for an audience of two million Albanians, looked at from the official websites of the parties. But if you see each candidate in particular, or sites that have just opened and are campaigning for parties, we have a completely different reflection of the amount, which increases several times,” he told BIRN.

According to BIRN, many newly opened Facebook pages are spreading political advertising but their expenses, which are high, are not connected always to parties or political candidates.

Facebook asked Albania to be transparent with political advertising in March during the election campaign by including “paid for by…” in sponsored posts.

Political expert Afrim Krasniqi, head of the Albanian Institute of Political Studies, a think tank based in Tirana, told BIRN that this is the first time an Albanian election campaign is being held more virtually than physically.

“This is why parties and candidates are using social media as the cheapest and fastest source of communication,” he told BIRN.

He added that Albania lacks a strong regulatory legal basis or control mechanism concerning the finances of election campaigns or party propaganda on social media.

A law, “On Political Parties”, only obliges parties to be transparent about their financial resources, while the Central Election Commission is responsible for monitoring and auditing the finances of political parties.

Turkish Court Releases Jailed Journalist and Writer Ahmet Altan

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Prominent Turkish writer and journalist Ahmet Altan has been released from prison after the Court of Cassation overturned the verdicts against him.

The decision came on Wednesday, one day after the European Court of Human Rights, ECHR said Altan’s imprisonment, which has lasted more than four-and-a-half years, violated his human rights. The ECHR also ordered Turkey to pay 16,000 euros in non-pecuniary damages.

“I do not know what my feelings are. I do not know why I am out. They sent me to prison without asking and now they released me without asking,” Altan told the press after this release.

The writer has been in an Istanbul prison since September 2016 on charges related to the failed coup attempt in July 2016.

He was arrested over allegations that he disseminated subliminal messages related to the coup attempt during a TV programme, as well as articles he had written criticising the government.

Altan denied the charges, which he and his lawyer insisted were politically motivated.

“This has been judicial persecution which lasted more than four years and seven months. Altan was held with a completely empty file,” Figen Calıkusu, his lawyer, told the press. “He was considered a perpetrator of the coup attempt for the articles he wrote,” Calıkusu added.

In 2018, Altan was sentenced to life in jail without parole for attempting to overthrow the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The ruling has now been overturned by Turkey’s top appeal court.

Following the first verdict, Altan was re-tried and sentenced to more than 10 years for aiding the “Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation” or “FETO” for short.

FETO is the name given by the Turkish government for followers of the exiled preacher Fethullah Gulen. Ankara accuses Gulen and his supporters of orchestrating the coup. The US-based Gulen denies any involvement.

In 2019, Altan was briefly released due to the time he had served but re-arrested only after eight days because the prosecutor objected to his release.

Rights groups, opposition and journalists’ organisations have welcomed his latest release.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ, said it welcomed the release of Altan and urged the government not to make the same mistake of rearresting him.

“Turkish authorities should not repeat the mistake of rearresting Altan as they did in 2019, and should allow him to live and work freely,” Gulnoza Said, head of Europe and Central Asia Program at CPJ, said.

“Altan should never have been arrested and should have been released years ago. Better late than never but let’s not shrug off how we got here – don’t reward hostage-taking.” Nate Schenkkan, Director of Research Strategy at the rights organisation Freedom House wrote on Twitter.

In Offering ‘Hate-Free’ Social Media, Old Worries Haunt New Apps

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

For years, London-based writer and artist Mary Morgan has used social media to raise awareness and engage in debate, particularly Twitter and Instagram. Until the hate speech became too much.

“Anyone who spends time on Twitter knows it can be an absolutely horrible place,” said Morgan, whose work focuses on body politics, or the practices and policies through which powers of society regulate the human body.

So she began exploring alternative apps, settling on Clubhouse, an audio-based social network where users can join rooms and listen to, participate or moderate discussions on any topic that might interest them.

“The power of Clubhouse is that you can choose who you speak to. You can’t just randomly start messaging people with hate. I think that’s a real power to the platform,” Morgan told BIRN.

“Especially when it comes to activism, like-minded individuals and people who want to participate and learn will be drawn to houses and clubs, meaning we can all speak to and learn from each other in an environment that is encouraging of that.”

Launched in April 2020, Clubhouse currently boasts more than eight million users worldwide.

And it’s not alone in winning new users turned off by the inability of social media giants to find a way to filter out offensive content on their platforms – Mastodon, MeWe and CloutHub are just a few of the emerging names benefitting from a backlash against the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Experts, however, warn that while these alternative apps might be motivated by high ideals, they face the same issues that have dogged the giants – how to provide transparency, avoid hate speech and protect privacy, while also making money.

“I understand the desire that people have to move to new platforms,” said Ayden Ferdeline, a Berlin-based public interest technologist.

“We desperately need more spaces for lawful speech, but we need these new platforms to be more transparent than Facebook or Twitter are, about how they operationalise their policies and procedures, and to be designed from day one to uphold and respect fundamental human rights.”

Turned off Twitter


 A mobile phone displays the suspended status of the Twitter account of Donald J. Trump, 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/MICHAEL REYNOLDS

Skopje-born Katarina P. spent 11 years on Twitter as an active member of the Twitter community in North Macedonia. Under an alias, Katarina, who declined to give her surname, used her profile to follow and comment on the events of any day in her home country and the wider Balkan region, engaging in sometimes heated debates.

Then, in February this year, Twitter suspended Katarina’s profile, without any specific explanation.

“I believe I got suspended because I came into a conflict with another Twitter account that was promoting misogyny through quasi-Christian Orthodox theology,” Katarina recalled.  “After my impulsive reaction to these tweets, my account got suspended.”

She appealed to Twitter’s Support Team, but, after a generic response to say they would look into it her case, Katarina never heard back. She assumed she was shut down based on the complaints of “religious fanatics”, and was frustrated at the lack of communication from Twitter.

Stung by criticism over how social media was used in the storming of the US Capitol by Donald Trump supporters on January 6, Twitter and Facebook appear to have adopted more restrictive approaches to what can and cannot be posted on their platforms.

Experts, however, say that the use of Artificial Intelligence has resulted in a litany of errors, with AI lacking the required contextual and nuanced analysis to distinguish strong criticism from defamation and radical political opinions from expressions of hatred and racism or indictment to violence, particularly in languages spoken by far fewer people than, say, English, French, German or Russian.

Katarina believes she is a victim of this, and is already looking for an alternative platform where she can engage in debate.

“I liked Twitter since it was unique for the microblogging opportunities it offered,” she said. “I hope that a new network with similar content might appear soon. And I won’t lie when I say that I am looking forward to it.”

Friendlier Facebooks


A Facebook logo. Photo: EPA-EFE/Julien de Rosa

Clubhouse might still be in its beta stage, but it has attracted huge attention.

“It is a completely new and different app, and I see it as great replacement for all of the podcasts, with the addition that you can not only listen to them, but also actively engage in the discussion,” said Marija Andrejska, a digital marketing specialist in Skopje who began using Clubhouse this year. “I believe this is one fantastic feature that has never been seen before.”

The app has an air of exclusivity to it that not everyone likes, however. As an invite-only app, a new user has to be invited by an existing member to join, and it’s only available for those using iPhones.

“On the downside, I think it’s a pretty ‘elitist’ app, and I don’t like that,” Andrejska told BIRN. “Since it functions only by invites and it’s only for iPhone users, it can create closed, in a way segregated groups, which can be dangerous in the long run. Therefore, I think that you cannot really use Clubhouse with the same intensity as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or even TikTok.”

Turkish journalist Dilek Kutuk said Clubhouse was a great place to exchange ideas, “especially in Turkey”, where society is deeply polarised along political lines.

“I see many voice chat rooms in Clubhouse where people talk and share their opinions, as opposed to Twitter, where all you can see is fights between those that have different political opinions,” Kutuk told BIRN.

MeWe has also seen a recent spike in user numbers, particularly in January.

Launched in 2012, the network says it is built on “trust, control and love”, and represents a secure and private alternative to Facebook with more than 16 million worldwide logging in to it use its newsfeed, private text and video chats and groups.

Then there’s CloutHub, considered an alternative to Facebook and Twitter. With some 255,000 users, CloutHub describes itself as a “non-biased social network for people engaged in meaningful civic, social and political issues.” It has also seen a growth in its user base since the beginning of the year.

Mastodon, a decentralised open-source platform,  is another under-the-radar alternative to Twitter. Users say it offers much better tools to protect privacy and fight online harassment than Twitter. Launched in 2016, the platform has more than two million users worldwide, and has been billed as a model for a “friendlier social network” dedicated to keeping out hateful content.

New apps under scrutiny


Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Freestocks

But while such apps might bill themselves as ‘friendlier’, hate-free alternatives to Twitter and Facebook, experts say they face the same questions regarding privacy, transparency and how they moderate what’s being said, written or posted on their platforms.

“It is understandable why tech companies want to cleanse their platforms of mis- and dis- information, but neither their human moderators nor their technical measures are able to do so in a an accurate and human rights-respecting manner,” said Ferdeline.

Marcin de Kaminski, security and innovation director of Civil Rights Defenders, a Sweden-based international human rights organisation, said there is already concern.

“From our perspective, Clubhouse does allow users to speak freely, yes. But they also compromise on their users’ privacy, and there are no safeguards when it comes to protecting users from marginalised or targeted communities when it comes to verbal attacks, threats or slander,” said De Kaminski.

“Users that choose to use Clubhouse need to understand the risks, both technical and socio-legal.”

He warned of being blinded by the novelty of new features.

“It is easy to get mesmerized by new fascinating features and the possibility to have seamless voice chats with friends and colleagues may be tempting during the isolation of the ongoing pandemic,” De Kaminski told BIRN.

“However, Clubhouse has really made it possible to ask oneself very important questions – which data is harvested when you use the service and who has access to that data?”

Nor does being the new kid on the block necessarily protect against cyber attacks.

On Saturday, a report said that the personal data of 1.3 million Clubhouse users had been posted online on a popular hacker forum. Clubhouse denied being hacked and said that the data “is all public profile information from our app, which anyone can access via the app or out API [application programming interface].”

Privacy concerns have already prompted many users to migrate from messaging apps such as WhatsApp to the likes of Signal or Telegram, which claim to offer better privacy features.

Privacy and data protection strategist Lourdes M. Turrecha said any privacy failures could cost social media startups big.

“These privacy concerns are serious enough to create trouble for Clubhouse in a world where data protection enforcements have teeth – note the recent $650 million class action settlement following the $5 billion Federal Trade Commission’s fine against social media predecessor, Facebook,” said Turrecha.

“While these figures may seem like slaps on the wrist for a company like Facebook, a pre-revenue startup like Clubhouse doesn’t have the war chest to chalk these up as a cost of doing business, despite its $110 million in funding.”

Turrecha warned of the risks of users “trading” their privacy for greater freedom of speech.

“While neither speech nor privacy rights are absolute, I caution against pitting the two against each other through false tradeoffs,” she said. “We should demand technologies that protect both speech and privacy rights.”

Tirana Mayor’s Bodyguards Criticised for Manhandling Inquisitive Journalist

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The head of the Albanian Media Council has criticised the behaviour of the Mayor of Tirana’s security detail after a video published by Ora News media outlet showed a journalist being physically stopped from putting questions to Mayor Erion Veliaj.

“Veliaj was holding a political event and after he finished he entered a cafe and we were waiting for him outside,” the journalist, Isa Myzyraj, told BIRN.

“As soon as he came out, I approached and asked a question that many are seeking answers to: what can you say about construction without criteria in Tirana? He meanwhile immediately started making accusations about the media executives where I work,” the journalist added.

“With an action that in my opinion … seriously violates freedom of the media, his companions not only obstructed me but held me by the hands and exerted physical pressure so I could not move until Veliaj got in his car and left,” he continued.

Koloreto Çukali, Head of the Albanian Media Council, called the action concerning.

“In the published videos, it is clear that the movement [of the journalist] was forcibly blocked by the individuals accompanying the mayor. The only ‘crime’ of the journalist was putting a microphone in front of Veliaj, a very normal practice in Western countries,” he told BIRN

He added that this is not good practice, especially when the questions were of clear public interest.

According to the 2020 report of media rights watchdog Freedom House, reporters in Albania have little job security and “remain subject to lawsuits, intimidation, and occasional physical attacks by those facing media scrutiny”.

Ora News is a local media outlet owned by Ylli Ndroqi. Its assets were seized by the prosecution on August 2020 under anti-mafia laws. The owner’s lawyer said the client suspected political motives behind the move.

Greek Police Intensify Hunt For Journalist’s Assassins

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Greek police are intensifying efforts to locate the perpetrators of last Friday’s execution-style” killing of the veteran crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz, shooting him dead outside his house in the southern Athens suburb of Alimos.

Investigators are leaning to the possibility that two different teams were involved in the street slaying. The first team likely monitored the reporter’s movements after he left STAR TV channel, where he had taken part in a daytime show, and then informed the second team, who waited in the area on a motorcycle and executed the crime.

A CCTV video camera appears to show two riders some seven minutes before the attack. The driver can be seen wearing a helmet while the second driver, who according to witnesses hopped off the bike and shot the reporter as he got out of his car, is wearing a khaki hoodie, sunglasses and a mask.

Karaivaz took a total of ten bullets, six in his chest. According to reports, he was also shot twice in his head, verifying a passersby’s testimony that, once he fell to the ground, he received the final hit from the assassins before they got away.

According to media outlet Kathimerini, police believe the Beverly scooter used in the attack had been stolen, and have created a log of motorbikes of the same type reported stolen from their owners lately.

Police have been also trying to locate the safe house of the perpetrators. Investigations are focused on hotels and Airbnb apartments in the southern suburbs of Athens, but also on recent arrivals at Greece’s airports and across the land borders. For the moment, the lead scenario appears to be that the two perpetrators were brought from abroad for the hit, and left afterwards.

On Saturday, the Prime Minister, Kiriakos Mitsotakis, tweeted: “The assassination in cold blood of Giorgos Karaivaz has shocked the entire society,” adding that he met with the Minister of Citizen’s Protection, Michalis Chrisochoidis, to urge him to help solve the case.

But Mitsotakis has received criticism for only responding to the news of the assassination some 24 hours after the attack. His tweet came hours after various media freedom watchdogs, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, and foreign officials, including the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, had already condemned the attack.

Former prime minister and opposition SYRIZA party leader Alexis Tsipras also criticized the government, saying that “those who were campaigning for law and order have let the country be converted to a colony of organised crime and uncontrolled action of gang mafias”.

Speaking on TV, the deputy Minister of Citizen’s Protection, Lefteris Oikonomou, said a series of similar-style assassinations in the last three years suggested that some form of “open war” has been going on.

On the website bloko.gr that he founded and managed, which focused on crime and police authorities, Karaivaz had reported on more than ten assassinations that have taken place since 2018 and are attributed to conflicts between different gangs for supremacy. The authorities have been studying his laptop, his car and his mobile phone, reportedly also hit by a bullet.

Karaivaz’s funeral meanwhile took place on Sunday in Kallifytos, a village just outside Drama, where his only son, Dimitris, 19, said: “My father believed a lot in people and he loved them. He believed in a second chance”.

“Of course, we want the people that killed him to be caught, so that they will not kill someone else in future,” he added.

“But my father would forgive them for killing him, and would look for the reason behind this and wouldn’t want this event to terrorize society – a society that fights for freedom and equality,” he concluded.

Secure Comms: Cracking the Encrypted Messages of Balkan Crime Gangs

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

When Serbian police arrested the leaders of a notorious crime gang in the first few days of February this year, in the search for evidence they seized 44 mobile phones equipped with an encrypted messaging app created by Canada-based Sky ECC.

Sky ECC described itself as “a global leader in secure messaging technology”, helping to keep a host of industries safe from identity theft and hacking. Law enforcement authorities in the United States and Europe, however, say it was created with the sole purpose of facilitating drug trafficking and had become the messaging app of choice for transnational crime organisations.

Using equipment that President Aleksandar Vucic said Serbia had “borrowed from friends”, police managed to access the app. What they found was gruesome, and damning – photos of two dead men, one of them decapitated.

Led by Veljko Belivuk, the gang – part of a group of violent football fans – is suspected of drug trafficking, murder and illegal weapons possession.

Belivuk and his associates, who remain in custody but have not yet been charged, allegedly used the app to organise criminal activities, and to brag about their exploits. In this, they were not alone.

On March 9, three days after Vucic displayed the photos, police in Belgium and the Netherlands made what Europol described the next day as a large number of arrests after secretly infiltrating the communications of some 70,000 Sky ECC devices and, from mid-February, reading them ‘live’.

On March 12, US authorities indicted Jean-Francois Eap, chief executive officer of Sky Global, the company behind Sky ECC, and Thomas Herdman, a former high-level distributor of Sky Global devices, accusing them of conspiracy to violate the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, RICO. Eap issued a statement denying any wrongdoing.

Critics of the government under Vucic say Belivuk had long acted with impunity, protected by reported ties to a number of senior governing officials.

Serbia boasted of a “war” on organised crime. But the timing of Belivuk’s arrest and the operation against Sky ECC raises fresh questions about what preceded the Serbian police swoop – whether Serbia acted alone, or was prompted to do so by evidence unearthed elsewhere.

Either way, the downfall of Belivuk and Sky ECC has shed new light on the lengths Balkan crime gangs have gone to evade surveillance, and the challenge facing authorities to strike back. It has also fuelled talk of the need to criminalise such software, raising alarm among some who say this would punish legitimate users, from political dissidents to investigative journalists.

The Serbian Interior Ministry and Security Intelligence Agency, BIA, did not respond to requests for comment.

“Organised crime groups from the Balkans have adapted quickly and cleverly in recent years to innovate and use technology to their advantage,” said Walter Kemp, director of the South-Eastern Europe Observatory at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.

While some still carry cash across borders or use wire transfers, others are using encrypted communication tools, laundering money through cryptocurrencies and elaborate financial schemes and branching into cyber and cyber-enabled crime, Kemp told BIRN. 

“But while criminals are first-movers and quick adapters in using technology, law enforcement agencies are lagging behind.”

This message will self-destruct


Screenshot: skyecc.com

Founded in 2008, Sky ECC surged in popularity after messages sent via another encrypted messaging service, EncroChat, were intercepted and decoded in a French and Dutch-led operation in mid-2020, leading to the arrest of over 800 people Europe-wide and the seizure of drugs, guns and large sums of suspect cash.

Sky devices offered self-destructing messages, an encrypted vault and a panic button in the event the user believed the device had been compromised. Sky ECC was installed exclusively on secure devices from Apple, Google and Blackberry, which could be bought online. All that was required of a user was to pay a subscription.

At the time of the police operation, three million messages per day were being sent via Sky ECC. Roughly 20 per cent of its 170,000 users were in Belgium and the Netherlands, with the greatest concentration in the Belgian port of Antwerp, a popular destination for illegal drugs arriving in Europe from South America. 

Europol, the European Union’s police agency, said that information acquired from “unlocking the encryption” of Sky ECC would help solve serious and cross-border organised crime “for the coming months, possibly years.”

For Balkan clients, there were three websites promoting the app in languages of the region – skyecceurope.com, skyeccbalkan.com, skyeccserbia.com.

It is unclear if these operated under the umbrella of Sky Global or were independent distributors.  BIRN contacted them but did not receive any reply. The website of Sky Global is also now in the hands of authorities. BIRN was unable to reach the company for comment.

Serbian nationals arrested in France and UK

Sky and EncroChat devices were, until recently, easy to find on Serbian and Croatian advertising sites, their price ranging from 600 euros to 2,200 euros depending on the type of phone and subscription. Subscriptions were commonly paid with cryptocurrency, to avoid leaving a trace.

A police official in Bosnia and Herzegovina said they were also in use among criminals there.

“They use those special apps and providers you can’t interfere with, and there’s no trace of their existence in the phone. The use is legal here,” the official, who declined to be named, told BIRN.

While police were unable to intercept the communication, he said, in some cases an arrested person would confess to using such apps and provide access.

A senior Interpol official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Balkan drug gangs were using EncroChat to communicate with South American cartels concerning the trafficking of drugs to Europe.

French authorities had been investigating EncroChat since 2017, stepping up efforts in 2019 and secretly installing an implant on all EncroChat devices disguised as a system update. The implant caused the device to transmit all data that had not been erased to a French police server and to Europol and collected data created after the device had been compromised.

The company eventually alerted users but millions of messages had already been intercepted.

Dutch and French police as well as Europol declined to give any further details regarding possible connections to Balkan crime gangs, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation.

A French newspaper report on March 27, however, said that a Serbian national had been arrested in a suburb of Paris following the Sky ECC operation on suspicion of selling its devices. In the UK, reports say another Serbian, 29-year-old Milos Bigovic, pleaded guilty in a UK court in August 2020 after he was arrested trying to smuggle cocaine hydrochloride into southern England on a cruise ship, his communications having been intercepted in the operation against EncroChat.

In Serbia, some criminals went further; in 2019, when police busted a major marijuana farm that had been run with the help of several security service officials, investigators found that those involved had communicated via a custom-made app called ‘Razgovor’ [Conversation].

Those arrested handed over their phones, apparently confident that police would not discover the app hidden behind the calculator interface. They were wrong and police, according to the indictment, gained access to conversations in which the suspects agreed on the production and distribution of drugs.

Admissible in court


Members of Veljko Belivuk’s group are being transferred for interrogation with a strong police presence. Photo:mup.gov.rs

It remains unclear whether foreign authorities supplied Serbia with evidence against Belivuk and Co obtained as part of the operation against Sky ECC, or if Serbia only harvested content from the devices it seized in the arrests.

Bearing in mind that most of the content sent via Sky devices disappeared soon after being sent, it is doubtful police in Serbia were able to recover much from the seized devices.

Authorities in Serbia did not respond to BIRN’s questions.

In the case of intercepted communication, for it to be used as evidence in court the police must have had prior court permission to conduct surveillance. It is not known whether Belivuk and his gang were under court-sanctioned surveillance. BIRN asked the court but was told such information cannot be disclosed.

The issue came before a UK court in February, when appeals judges rejected an attempt to prevent prosecutors from using as evidence messages sent via EncroChat.

The case rested on whether communications had been intercepted by French police while ‘being transmitted’ by the device or while ‘stored’ on it. As the material had been extracted from the device itself and was unencrypted, the Appeal Court found that the evidence had not been gained by ‘interception’ and was admissible, the BBC reported.

Criminalising encryption

Sky Global has denied any wrongdoing, with CEO Eap saying “We stand for the protection of privacy and freedom of speech in an era when these rights are under increasing attack. We do not condone illegal or unethical behaviour by our partners or customers. To brand anyone who values privacy and freedom of speech as a criminal is an outrage.”

But Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin said the use of such devices should be illegal.

“It is indisputable that it is used by criminals,” Vulin said on March 7. “I am in favour of it being a crime, as I believe that the purchase of any telephone number, regardless of whether it is prepaid or postpaid, must be done with an ID card.”

“It may not stop criminals from using it, but if nothing else it will give the police another reason to arrest them and remove them from the streets.”

Some journalists and rights advocates say this is a slippery slope.

“Encryption is a tool. And like any tool, it can be used for good and for bad,” said Fabian Scherschel, a freelance journalist, writer and podcaster who has covered the topic closely.

“We’ve already seen legislation against so-called ‘hacker tools’ massively backfire and threaten to criminalise the legitimate work of IT security specialists and journalists. I have a feeling this legislation could cause similar problems. It will also, most likely, make it easier to spy on the general populace, who has no intention of using encryption to hide criminal behaviour whatsoever.”

Diego Naranjo, head of policy at the Brussels-based advocacy group European Digital Rights, EDRi, said it was important to challenge the narrative that encryption is only used by criminals.

“As any other interference with human rights, an attack on encryption or privacy-enhancing technologies needs to be prescribed by law, necessary and proportionate to the aims to be achieved in a democratic society,” said Naranjo.

He noted that the EncroChat and Sky ECC cases had demonstrated that law enforcement agencies have ways to penetrate such communication.

“We may be already in the Crypto wars 3.0, and it is up to us to ensure that encryption is perceived as a tool to ensure human rights and not something only criminals use.”

Lidija Komlen Nikolic, Serbian Deputy Appellate Public Prosecutor, warned of the dangers of criminalising the use of such apps.

“The idea is to enable state authorities, the police, to be able to find evidence more easily for the fight against organised crime or any other type of crime,” Nikolic told N1 regional broadcaster.

“But there should not be the presumption that all of us, who have devices or have software that uses some kind of encryption, are potential perpetrators of a crime.”

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