Romania’s High Court of Cassation and Justice ruled on Tuesday that pretending to be someone else on Facebook is an offence punishable under the country’s criminal law.
The ruling arose from the case of a man sentenced to three years and eight months in prison for blackmail, digital fraud and breach of privacy for posting intimate images of his ex-girlfriend on a social network and opening pornography site accounts in her name.
According to the indictment, the man created the false social network account after threatening his former girlfriend in December 2018 that he would publish several videos of them having sex, as well as pictures in which she appeared naked, if she did not resume the relationship with him.
The case reached the High Court after the Court of Appeal in the Transylvanian city of Brasov in central Romania asked for its opinion about whether “opening and using an account on a social network opened to the public” to publish real “information, photographs, video images, etc.” could be considered digital fraud as defined by article 325 of the criminal code.
The High Court concluded that “opening and using an account on a social network open to the public, using as a username the name of another person and introducing real personal data that allows for that person’s identification” meets the requirements to be considered as digital fraud.
The Brasov court referred the case to the High Court because other Romanian courts had previously reached different and contradictory conclusions in similar cases.
Social media giant Twitter’s transparency report for the first six months of 2020 said Turkey continued to lead the world in terms of Twitter censorship in many categories, including the highest number of third-party takedown requests, court orders and accounts and tweets withheld.
Turkey had the highest number of combined requests including court orders and other legal demands, with 45,776 requests. It was followed by Japan and Russia, which made 45,776 and 30,436 requests respectively.
Turkey also at the top of the list when it comes to the number of court orders it sent to Twitter. It sent 6,513 such requests in the first half of 2020. Russia followed far behind with 2,972.
In other legal demands categories, meaning non-court order requests, Turkey again topped the list with 39,263 requests made in the first half of 2020, followed by Japan, which made 38,814 requests, followed in third place by Russia, which submitted 27,464 such requests.
Turkey also sent 347 information requests to Twitter, which did not comply any of them.
Turkey remains in number one place for the total number of accounts specified for closure/action under court orders and other legal demands. It specified 99,840 accounts for closure or other actions, followed by Indonesia, which sought action on 74,660 accounts. Japan came third, with 47,472 accounts.
In terms of accounts withheld by Twitter, Turkey again had the highest number globally with 2,501 withheld accounts, followed by Russia with 340 and India with 238.
In terms of tweets withheld by Twitter, Turkey was also number one globally, responsible for 12,135 of the total of 28,542 tweets withheld in that period. Some 42 per cent of all tweets withheld globally were from Turkey.
According to the Twitter report, 58 accounts of verified journalists and news outlets from around the world were subject to 333 legal demands in the period in consideration. Most of these legal demands originated either from India, 149, or from Turkey, 142 – together making them responsible for 291 of the 333 legal demands.
While Turkey leads in terms of Twitter censorship, and made the highest number of requests in several categories, it now aims to expand its control over social media companies with a new digital law.
Experts fear that if it does appoint an official representative to Turkey, as demanded, Twitter will have to respond more often to official demands.
“The removal of content rate [based on Turkey’s requests] was [only] 0.33 per cent for the first six months of 2020. Turkey wants Twitter to come to the country [in terms of a representative] for this reason,” Yaman Akdeniz, a Turkish digital rights activist wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.
“Coming to Turkey will result with Twitter becoming complicit in rights violations and would be against the current approach and policy adopted by Twitter regarding demands from Turkey,” Akdeniz added.
So far, only YouTube and Russia’s VK social media platform have appointed legal representatives to Turkey. Facebook, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, has said it will not appoint a representative while Twitter is still undecided on the matter.
Turkey’s Competition Board on Monday said an investigation had been launched into Facebook and WhatsApp over a new privacy agreement that forces WhatsApp user to share its data with Facebook. Users who reject the terms of the agreement will not be able to use WhatsApp after February 8.
The Turkish competition watchdog said the requirement allowing collection of that data should be suspended until the investigation is over.
“WhatsApp Inc and WhatsApp LLC companies will be known as Facebook after the new agreement and this will allow Facebook to collect more data. The board will investigate whether this violates Turkish competition law,” the board said.
The Turkish government is calling on its citizens to delete WhatsApp and to use domestic messaging app BiP instead, developed by Turkey’s mobile operator Turkcell, in addition to other secure messing apps such as Telegram and Signal.
Turkey’s presidency, ministries, state institutions and many other people have announced that they have deleted WhatsApp and downloaded other applications.
“Let’s stand against digital fascism together,” Ali Taha Koc, head of the Turkish Presidential Digital Transformation Office, said on Twitter on January 10, urging people to use the domestic BiP app.
BiP gained 1.12 million new users on Sunday alone after the new privacy agreement was introduced.
The new privacy agreement will not be in force in the EU and the UK because of its tight digital privacy law.
The EU fined Facebook 110 million euros earlier in 2017 euros for giving misleading statements on the company’s $19 billion acquisition of the internet messaging service WhatsApp in 2014.
Millions of people around the globe have abandoned WhatsApp and migrated to other messaging apps, Signal and Telegram in particular, and Signal and Telegram had server issues hosting such a large number of users.
Telegram and Signal which are accepted as the most secure messaging apps have become the most downloaded application in the past week for both Android and Apple phones users.
We’re looking for people who are willing to share their experience with us to help in a story we’re currently working on. Scroll down for information on how to part take.
The key things we want to know:
What type of violations have you reported?
In what language was the content?
How was the report processed?
What do we consider to be violations of social media community guidelines:
Violent threats (direct or indirect)
Harassment, which entails inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others
Hateful conduct, which entails promoting violence against or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease.
Things to note:
We are looking for social media users that reported content in the Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Albanian, and Macedonian languages. We want to hear as many different experiences from all around Southeast Europe.
Your stories will be used to help us with an ongoing investigation.
How to take part?
To submit your experience, all you need to do is fill out this form.
Experts told an online debate hosted by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network on Tuesday that the current regulation systems for online media in the Western Balkans are not good enough, but efforts to curb the publication of hate speech and defamatory comments must not tip over into censorship.
Media and legal experts from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia who spoke at the debate entitled ‘Case Law and Online Media Regulation in the Balkans’ also said that the application of existing legislation is inadequate.
Authorities often rely on legislation that was developed for traditional media which has not been adapted accordingly, or on self-regulation which is not mandatory.
Lazar Sandev, an attorney at law from North Macedonia argued that “those who create public opinion regarding matters of public interest do not uphold any standards, they do not have any legal knowledge”.
Jelena Kleut, associate professor at the University of Novi Sad’s Faculty of Philosophy, said that in Serbia there is lack of willingness to apply standards in online media, and noted a difference between rich and poor media outlets as well as responsible and not responsible ones.
“The wealthy, irresponsible media – they have legal knowledge but they don’t care. They would rather see the complaints in court, pay a certain amount of fines and continue along, they don’t care. On the other end of the spectrum, we have responsible but poor media,” Kleut said.
The media experts also debated the controversial issue of reader comment sections on websites, which some sites around the world have removed in recent years because of a proliferation of hate speech, defamation and insulting language.
According to Montenegro’s Media Law, which came in force in August this year, the founder of an online publication is obliged to remove a comment “that is obviously illegal content” without delay, and no later than 60 minutes from learning or receiving a report that a comment is illegal.
Milan Radovic, programme director of the Civil Alliance NGO and a member of the Montenegrin Public Broadcaster’s governing council, argued that this “it is clear that in such a short period of time, if it is applied, will damage those affected, but also damages for freedom of expression”.
Edina Harbinja, a senior lecturer at Britain’s Aston University, warned that there is a conflict between regulatory attempts and media freedom, and that “this is when we need to be careful in how we regulate, not to result in censorship”.
This was the second debate in a series of discussions on online media regulation with various stakeholders, organised as a part of the regional Media for All project, which aim to support independent media outlets in the Western Balkans to become more audience-oriented and financially sustainable.
The project is funded by the UK government and delivered by a consortium led by the British Council in partnership with BIRN, the Thomson Foundation and the International NGO Training and Research Centre, INTRAC.
Over the past two decades, the process of digitisation has completely transformed the European services sector, though EU legislation regulating the provision of those services has not kept up with the fast-changing technological environment. With consensus among European policymakers that the 20-year-old piece of legislation, the e-Commerce Directive, was in dire need of updating, the European Commission announced in January 2020 that it would pass a new Digital Services Act by the end of 2020. That date, expected to be December 2, is rapidly approaching.
With this brand new set of regulations governing the EU’s digital market, the Commission intends to clarify and introduce new digital services liability rules and ensure a more competitive digital market where even small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) can compete with the more established players.
Policymakers in the EU, which is already home to the world’s strictest data privacy laws, believe that Europe is in a unique position to set new standards for the regulation of digital services for the whole world. The forthcoming rules represent an unprecedented strike against the seemingly limitless power of big tech, which are likely to oppose the reforms.
A close-up image shows the slogan of the ‘StopHateForProfit’ campaign on the organization’s website displayed on a smartphone screen in Cologne, Germany, 29 June 2020. EPA-EFE/SASCHA STEINBACH
What new rules are coming?
Although the final contours of the legislative package are not yet public knowledge, it is expected that the regulation will come in two legislative proposals. The first set of proposals contained in the Digital Services Act will likely focus on updating digital services providers’ responsibilities and liabilities. The Digital Markets Act will then likely be concerned with limiting the power of big platforms in general.
In a recent speech, Executive Vice-President of the Commission Margrethe Vestager said that digital media platforms need to be more transparent about the way they share the digital world that we see.
“They’ll have to report on what they’ve done to take down illegal material. They’ll have to tell us how they decide what information and products to recommend to us, and which ones to hide – and give us the ability to influence those decisions, instead of simply having them made for us. And they’ll have to tell us who’s paying for the ads that we see, and why we’ve been targeted by a certain ad,” Vestager said earlier this year.
Although it is not year clear which specific platforms will be targeted, it is widely expected that the new rules with mainly apply to social media platforms with more than 2 million users, which have, until now, bitterly resisted attempts to disclose their algorithms.
“Platforms need to ensure that their users can be protected from illegal goods and content online, by putting in place the right processes to react swiftly to illegal activities, and to cooperate with law enforcement authorities more effectively,” the Commission’s press officer for the digital economy, Charles Manoury, told BIRN an email.
When asked about the concrete rules being considered in Brussels, Manoury said that the Commission will “aim to harmonise a clear set of obligations (responsibilities) for online platforms, including notice-and-action procedures, redress, transparency and accountability measures, and cooperation obligations.”
In a report produced by the European Parliamentary Research Service in October, EU experts came up with the following recommendations for the Commission:
Introduce a clear, standardised notice-and-action procedures to deal with illegal and harmful content;
Enhanced transparency on content curation and reporting obligations for platforms;
Out-of-court dispute settlement on content management, particularly on notice-and-action procedures.
Those policy recommendations are strikingly similar to the rules already in effect in the country currently holding the Presidency of the Council of the EU – Germany.
A Google logo is displayed at the Google offices in Berlin, Germany, 24 June 2019. EPA-EFE/HAYOUNG JEON
German lessons
“The Commission in its impact assessments takes into account already existing EU laws, such as the NetzDG,” noted the Commission’s spokesman Manoury, referring to the Network Enforcement Act, which was passed by the German parliament back in 2017.
According to the website of the German Ministry of Justice and and Consumer Protection, the law aims to fight hate crime and criminally punish fake news and other unlawful content on social networks more effectively. This includes insults, malicious gossip, defamation, public incitement to crime, incitement to hatred, disseminating portrayals of violence and threatening the commission of a felony.
In practice, all social media platforms (with more than 2 million users) that are accessible in Germany are obliged to take down or block access to “manifestly unlawful content” within 24 hours of receiving a complaint. They also have to offer their users an accessible procedure for reporting criminally punishable content and take “immediate notice” of any content that might violate German criminal law.
But German lawmakers didn’t stop there. In June this year, the Budestag decided to tighten further the laws against hate speech online by requiring social networks to report to the BKA (Federal Police) and transmit some user data, such as IP addresses or port numbers, directly to the authorities.
Moreover, new rules will oblige operators of social networks to submit biannual reports on their handling of complaints about criminally punishable content. These reports must contain information, for example, on the volume of complaints and the decision-making practices of the network, as well as about the teams responsible for processing reported content. They must be made available to everybody on the internet.
Social media platforms could be liable for fines of up to 50 million euros if they fail on their reporting duties, according to a statement from the Justice Ministry.
According to the German daily Stuttgarter Zeitung, so far nine social media platforms have offered transparency reports: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Tiktok, Soundcloud, Change.org and Google+. The number of complaints varies greatly. In the second half of 2019, 4,274 unsatisfied users reported to Facebook. There were 843,527 complaints on Twitter and 277,478 on YouTube. Facebook felt compelled to take action in almost a quarter of the cases. 87 per cent of these posts were deleted within 24 hours, a total of 488. Twitter took care of 16 per cent of the complaints, 86 per cent of which were removed from the network within a day, according to the German newspaper.
However, the new obligations have their critics. Some express concern that legal content will end up being deleted by overzealous platforms eager to avoid paying hefty fines, the so-called problem of “over-blocking”. In 2017, when the law was first passed by the German parliament, even journalism unions in Germany protested against it, fearing a new form of censorship.
Reacting to the criticisms, German Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht recently called for the introduction of a “counter-presentation procedure”, which would give authors of deleted content the right to ask social networks for a reassessment of their decision before any fines would be imposed.
There is also criticism that some of the proposed rules might even be in conflict with the German constitution. This particularly concerns the law intended to combat far-right extremism and hate crime, which was passed in the summer and is intended to force operators of social networks to report criminal content such as the threat of dangerous bodily harm or defamation of public figures (mayors or municipal councillors) to the Federal Criminal Police Office. It is because of those concerns that the president has not yet signed the law.
Long way to go
The German experience clearly shows that certain measures to combat the spread of hate speech and other form of illegal content online are relatively easy to implement, while others, like direct reporting to the police, might take much longer to build a consensus around.
That being said, even when it comes to the seemingly more trivial measures, the European Commission’s mission is an infinitely more challenging one. First of all, it needs to make all member states agree on what even constitutes a hate crime on the internet. Then it has to create a set of rules that would be applicable across all member states.
According to a source in the European Commission familiar with the legislation, the first task is the easier one. “There is actually a very broad agreement across the EU on the question of illegal content. Basically, what is illegal offline is also illegal online – it is just a question of how you monitor it and what measures to take to make sure that the rules are followed also online,” the source, who wished to remain anonymous, told BIRN.
Whatever the rules that the Commission ends up proposing in early December, the speed of the final implementation of those measures will largely depend on the legal form of the rules.
Generally speaking, if the rules assume the form of EU regulations, the final implementation might take a very long time, as regulations need unilateral agreement by all member states. If EU legislators decide to go with directives, which leave a lot of space for individual member states to translate into their own respective national laws and don’t require unilateral agreement, things could go much faster.
According to the source from the Commission, half a year is an absolute minimum to expect the legislative process to take.
“If you have an extremely well-drafted piece of legislation that everyone agrees on, it can take half a year. I’ve never heard about anything going faster than this. It is already clear that this will not be very straightforward,” the source said.
More than 40 per cent of female victims of human trafficking have also been subjected to some form of online abuse, according to a report by a Serbian NGO looking at the correlation between the two.
In interviews with 178 women and girls who received support from the organisation Atina over the past five years, 42 per cent reported being the target of online abuse, ranging from cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking, hacking, catfishing, revenge porn and ‘doxing’, the online publishing of private information to publicly expose and shame the victim.
For 31 per cent, the online abuse was directly linked to the process of human trafficking.
“He was posting my half-naked photographs on Facebook and I couldn’t do anything about it,” said one victim of human trafficking who was 18 years old at the time and found refuge in a shelter run by Atina.
“People were commenting on these posts, they were insulting me, he called me a slut online, but no one ever wondered what I might be going through.”
When she reported the case to authorities, the woman said they looked at the photos and “laughed.”
“Later, after I went to the gynaecologist, I gave them the medical report that confirmed I was also sexually assaulted,” she told BIRN, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“At one point I even thought about killing myself, or killing him. The photos are still online.”
Serbia failing in fight against human trafficking
Women and girls make up the vast majority of victims of human trafficking, often for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
According to the latest Trafficking in Persons Report by the US State Department, published in June, the Serbian government “does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.”
While foreign women and girls also become victims in Serbia, Serbian women and girls are frequently trafficked abroad – to neighbouring countries and across Europe, particularly Austria, Germany, Italy and Turkey.
With lives becoming more digital, the Atina report highlights the threat from cyber-trafficking in the recruitment of victims for the purpose of sexual exploitation, as well as the live streaming of forced sexual exploitation.
There are fears that the COVID-19 pandemic may fuel the growth of cyber-trafficking given the restrictions on movement imposed by states.
Society ‘blames the woman’
In July, United Nations warned of the dangers posed by the loss of jobs, growing poverty, school closures and the rise in online interactions as potential drivers of trafficking.
Women and girls already account for more than 70 per cent of detected human trafficking victims and are among the hardest hit by the pandemic, Ghada Waly, the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in a statement. Women often face more difficulty finding paid jobs in the aftermath of crisis, Waly said, and urged “vigilance”.
Gender-based violence is prohibited under numerous international conventions, as well as under national laws in many countries, including Serbia. But the legal framework is often hazy when it comes to online gender-based violence, despite the fact the consequences can be equally as destructive. Online perpetrators frequently go unidentified.
One victim said society “always blames the woman.”
“She is response for being mistreated, she provoked it, she asked for it…,” the woman, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, told BIRN. “I also blamed myself for a being a victim of online harassment, but I was lucky enough to have the support of my family and that my case did end up in the media. Sadly, many women are usually left without any support.”
Atina Programme Manager Jelena Hrnjak said it is vital that the victims are heard – “Not only to be heard, but to be understood and respected.”
To read the full report “Behind the screens: Analysis of human trafficking victims’ abuse in digital surroundings” click here.
The report presents an overview of the main violations of digital rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia between January 31 and September 30, 2020, and makes a series of recommendations for authorities in order to curb such infringements during future social crises.
The global public health crisis triggered by the coronavirus exposed a new the failure of states around the world to provide a framework that would better balance the interests of safety and privacy. Instead, the report documents incidents of censorship, fake news, security breaches and concentration of information.
More than 200 pandemic-related violations tracked
At the onset of the pandemic, numerous violations of digital rights were observed – from violations of the privacy of persons in isolation to manipulation, dissemination of false information and Internet fraud.
BIRN and Share Foundation documented 221 violations in the context of COVID-19 during the eight-month monitoring period, the largest number coming during the initial peak of the pandemic in March and April – 67 and 79 respectively – before slowly declining.
The countries with the highest number of violations to date are Serbia, with 46, and Croatia, with 44.
The most common violation – accounting for roughly half of all cases – was manipulation in the digital environment caused by news sites that published unverified and inaccurate information, and by the circulating of incomplete and false data on social media.
This can be explained in large measure by the low level of media literacy in the countries of the region, where few people actually check the news and information provided to them, while the media themselves often publish unverified information.
The most common targets of digital rights violations were citizens and journalists. However, both of these groups were frequently also among the perpetrators.
Contact tracing apps: Useful or not?
The debate about the use of contact-tracing apps as a method of combating the spread of COVID-19 was one of the most important discussions in Croatia and North Macedonia.
At the very beginning of the pandemic, the Croatian government led by the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, proposed a change to the Electronic Communications Act under which, in extraordinary situations, the health minister would request from telecommunications companies the location data of users.
Similarly, Macedonian health authorities announced they were looking to use “all tools and means” to combat the virus, with North Macedonia among the first countries in the Western Balkans to launch a contact-tracing app on April 13.
Developed and donated to the Macedonian authorities by Skopje-based software company Nextsense, the StopKorona! app is based on Bluetooth distance measuring technology and stores data locally on users’ devices, while exchanging encrypted, anonymised data relevant to the infection spread for a limited period of 14 days. According to data privacy experts, the decentralised design guaranteed that data would be stored only on devices that run the app, unless they voluntarily submit that data to health authorities.
Croatia launched its own at the end of July, but by late August media reports said the Stop COVID-19 app had been downloaded by less than two per cent of mobile phone users in the country. The threshold for it to be effective is 60 per cent, the reports said.
Key worrying trends mapped
Illustration: Olivia Solis
Bosnia and Herzegovina saw a number of problems with personal data protection, free access to information and disinformation. In terms of disinformation, people were exposed to a variety of false and sometimes outlandish claims, including conspiracy theories about the origin of the coronavirus, its spread by plane and various miracle cures.
Conspiracy theories, like those blaming the spread of the virus on 5G mobile networks, flourished online in Croatia too. One person in Croatia destroyed their Wifi equipment, believing it was 5G.
In Hungary, fake news about COVID-19 arrived even before the virus itself, said journalist Akos Keller Alant, who monitored the digital environment in Hungary.
Several clickbait fake news sites published articles about COVID-19 victims a month before Hungary’s first confirmed case. The Anti-Cybercrime Unit of the Hungarian police arrested several people for spreading fake news, starting in early February when police raided the operators of a network of fake news sites.
In Kosovo, online media emerged as the biggest violators of digital rights by publishing unverified and false information as well as personal health information. Personal data rights were also violated by state institutions and public figures.
In Montenegro, the most worrying digital rights violations concerned privacy and personal data protection of those infected with the coronavirus or those forced to self-isolate.
The early days of the pandemic, when Montenegro was among the few countries that could claim to have kept a lid on the virus, was a rare moment of social and political consensus in the country about how to respond, said Tamara Milas of the Centre for Civic Education in Montenegro, an NGO.
The situation changed, however, when the government was accused of the gross violation of the right to privacy and the right to the protection of personal data.
Like its Western Balkan peers, North Macedonia was flooded with unverified information and claims shared online with regards the pandemic. Some of the most concerning cases included false claims about infected persons, causing a stir on social media.
In Romania, the government used state-of-emergency powers to shut down websites – including news and opinion sites – accused of spreading what authorities deemed fake news about the pandemic, according to BIRN correspondent Marcel Gascon, who monitors digital rights violations in Romania.
In Serbia, a prominent case concerned a breach of security in the country’s central COVID-19 database. For eight days, the login credentials for the database, Information System COVID-19, were publicly available on the website of a public health body.
In another incident, the initials, age, place-of-work and personal address of a person infected with the virus were posted on the official webpage of the municipality of Sid in western Serbia as well as on the town’s social media accounts.
In the report, BIRN and Share Foundation conclude that technology, especially in a time of crisis, should not be seen as the solution to complex issues, be that protection of health or upholding public order and safety. Rather, technology should be used to the benefit of citizens and in the interest of their rights and freedoms.
When intrusive technologies and regulations are put in place, it is hard to take a step back, particularly in societies with weak democratic institutions, the report states. Under such circumstances, the measures applied in one crisis for the protection of public health may one day be repurposed and used against other “social plagues”, ultimately leading to reduced human rights standards.
To read the full report click here. For individual cases, check our regional database, developed together with the SHARE Foundation.
Turkey on Wednesday imposed ten million Turkish lira (one million euro) fines on digital media giants including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Periscope and TikTok because they did not appoint official representatives in the country as required by a new digital media law adopted in July this year.
If appointed, the company’s representatives would have to remove any piece of content that the Turkish authorities consider illegal within 48 hours of an official request.
“As the deadline for social media companies… for informing the government about their representatives is over, ten million lira fines are imposed,” Deputy Transport Minister Omer Fatih Sayan said on Twitter.
Sayan called on the companies to appoint their representatives in Turkey immediately.
“Otherwise, other steps will be taken,” he warned.
According to the new digital media law, the online media giants now have 30 days to appoint their representatives. If they do not, 30 million lira (three million euro) fines will be imposed.
If they still do not comply within three months, they will face an advertisement ban for three months.
As final sanctions, their bandwidth will be halved and then cut by 90 per cent.
The government is also asking the online media giants to transfer their servers to Turkey.
So far, none of the major companies have complied.
Opposition parties and human rights groups see the new law as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to control media platforms and silence his critics.
The new regulations might result in these companies quitting the Turkish market, experts have warned.
PayPal quit the Turkish market in 2016 because of similar requests and Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey for more than two-and-a-half years.
Turkey has submitted the highest number of requests to Twitter to delete content and close accounts, the company has said.
According to Twitter, Turkey asked it to close nearly 9,000 accounts, but it only shut down 264 of them.
More than 300 citizens of Montenegro have filed lawsuits against the state for publishing their names on lists of people ordered to self-isolate. On Wednesday, a Podgorica-based lawyer, Dalibor Kavaric, who represents some of the citizens, said the government had violated their human rights.
“By publishing the names and personal data of persons in self-isolation, the government stigmatized them and unnecessarily exposed their privacy to the public … the government has unnecessarily caused material damage to the budget of Montenegro just because it didn’t respect the constitution,” Kavaric told BIRN.
The government published the names on March 21, despite warnings from opposition parties and civic society organisations that it risked violating constitutionally guaranteed human rights. They also warned that citizens whose names were published might sue the state before the courts.
The government said it had a right to publish the names because some citizens were not respecting self-isolation obligations. It also said it had approval for its actions from the Agency for Personal Data Protection. It stressed that the security forces could not control every citizen who should be in self-isolation, and that anyone who failed to self-isolate posed a threat to the entire community.
The Head of the EU Delegation to Montenegro, Aivo Orav, called on the authorities to find the right balance between protecting the health and respecting the confidentiality of health information and the right to privacy of citizens.
Danilo Papovic, from the Civic Alliance, said citizens had every right to to seek legal protection of their civil rights.
“The lawsuits are completely justified … This government action indicates the absence of responsibility both in the legal and financial sense, bearing in mind that the consequences of illegal actions are ultimately borne by the citizens, because any compensation is paid from the budget,” Papovic told BIRN.
On March 22, Prime Minister Dusko Markovic said no compromises would be made with those who violated preventative measures amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He also warned that the government would continue to publish the names of citizens who had been ordered to self-isolate.
“The lives of our citizens are the priority. We have estimated that the right to health and life is above the right to unconditional protection of personal data,” Markovic said.
But after the Civic Alliance submitted an appeal to the Constitutional court on March 23, on July 23, the court annulled the government decision to publish the names of citizens ordered to self-isolate – though it did not rule that the government had violated their human rights. The government then removed the list from its website.
A lawyer from Bijelo Polje, Milos Kojovic, said the Constitutional Court had confirmed that the government had violated basic human rights and freedoms by publishing the names of persons ordered to self-isolation. “The government didn’t respect their right to a private and family life,” Kojovic told the daily newspaper Dan.
“Persons on the list published on the official government website, then transmitted by all electronic and print media, are entitled to fair compensation for violation of their personal rights,” he added.
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