Digital rights Archives - Page 12 of 14

Montenegrin Coronavirus Patients’ Identities Exposed Online

Posted on March 18, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

After Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic announced on Tuesday evening that the country had its first two coronavirus cases, the patients’ identities were published by social media users.

Photos of one of the patients and her family were also posted online.

The ethnicities and religious beliefs of the patients were then targeted with hate-speech comments by some people on social networks.

The Montenegrin Association against AIDS, CAZAS, said that that every patient has the right to privacy and medical confidentiality.

“If you share photos of people who are infected on social networks and spread information about their health, you are directly violating [their] privacy and patient’s rights. There can be legal consequences for doing that,” CAZAS said in a press release.

President of the NGO Civic Alliance, Boris Raonic, warned about the danger of intolerance spreading in country as a result of the coronavirus.

“The stigmatisation of the infected and their families is a great danger in the coming period,” Raonic wrote on Twitter.

The first two coronavirus patients in the country had both recently returned to Montenegro, from Spain and from the US. One patient is from the city of Ulcinj and the other from the capital Podgorica.

Montenegro is a multi-ethnic state and is highly unusual in having no overwhelming community that makes up over half of its population.

About 45 per cent of the population identify as Montenegrins and about 29 per cent as Serbs. Albanians make up about 5 per cent of the population.

Data Collection of Hotel Guests in Hungary Causes Concern

Posted on March 13, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

From the beginning of the year, data on all hotel guests staying in Hungary has gone into a central database, drawing concerns from the National Authority for Data Protection and human rights groups about its use and storage.

The Hungarian Tourism Agency, the MTU, insists that collection of the data is the responsibility of accommodation owners. But many say they are suffering as a result.

“Many of our guests are reluctant to hand over their passports with all their personal data. Despite my telling them that this is a legal obligation, they leave with a bad experience. So they give us bad ratings on booking sites, which depresses our turnover,” a man who runs a small accommodation centre in Budapest told the Magyar Narancs weekly.

The latest innovation of the government in tourism, the National Tourism Data Supply Centre, NTAK, was launched in mid-2019 and has been fully effective since January 1, 2020.

The basic idea is to help to develop a tourism strategy and reduce the number of accommodations centres that do not operate in a completely legal way. All those offering accommodation, from big hotels to small Airbnbs, have to report their data on a daily basis.

Data on income, rooms, reservations and all guests have to be submitted to NTAK. Hotels can use their own software to communicate with it. Smaller service providers use the web-based Az Én Vendégszobám (My Guestroom) system, offered by the MTU free of charge.

While the collection of financial data is widely welcomed in the sector due to the large number of illegal or half-legal guestroom lettings, the collection of personal data raises more questions.

The programme collects the names of guests, their citizenship, date and place of birth, sex, mother’s name, number of travel documents, zip code and country of residence. There is a possibility of storing emails and phone numbers as well. It is not clear, however, exactly what kind of data is stored and who can access it. While hotels and Airbnb in many countries gather personal data of their guests, it is unusual to have one central database run by the state.

The MTU says the personal data is stored and handled only by the accommodation providers, not by them. However, according to the description of the NTAK, the system stores personal data in encrypted form. In addition, the software offered by MTU is web-based and stores all the data in the central server.

The current law does not specify what data the tourism agency is allowed to collect and states that the MTU can store personal data but not access it.

New legislation will be effective only from September. That will settle many questions, like specifying what data the agency can collect, what has to be encrypted, and more. But the legislation that comes into force in September also allows the police to search the data stored in the data-centre. Also, the agency is sending the data on all third-country guests to the National Directorate General for Aliens Policing. If the personal data was really encrypted, this would be impossible. Magyar Narancs sent several questions to MTÜ before publication, but its reply was only a statement without concrete answers to the queries.

Ádám Ramport, from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, HCLU, a human rights NGO, argues this could be seen as a pooling data gathering, which is unconstitutional.

The National Authority for Data Protection also wrote in a statement that the need for this data collection is not well reasoned. It questioned why the Aliens Policing department is allowed to keep the submitted data for five years. The practice is “a further restriction of … the right to the protection of personal data”, the authority summarized.

Facebook Extends Political Ads Rules to Balkans Before Elections

Posted on March 7, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Facebook has added Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Moldova and Turkey to its updated list of countries that must adhere to its strict political advertising transparency regulations.

The enforcement of the new regulations is expected in mid-March, about a month before parliamentary elections in Serbia and North Macedonia, due on April 26 and April 12 respectively. Montenegro is also due to hold the elections this year, by October at the latest.

Facebook launched the regulations in June last year. They mean that any adverts paid for by a political group or candidate must be labelled as such.

With the new 32 countries, the total count of states required to stick to the regulations, which relate to any adverts about social issues, elections or politics, rose to 89.

Apart from the five Balkan countries, the regulations will also expand to Chile, Japan, Mexico and Indonesia, to name a few. Facebook said it was working to expand enforcement to more countries later this year, including Myanmar and Brazil.

“Anyone who wants to run ads about elections or politics in these countries will need to confirm their identity with an ID issued from the country they want to run ads in and disclose who is responsible for the ad.

“We require that the advertiser provide additional information, like a local business address, local phone number, email and website, if they choose to use their organization or Page name in the disclaimer. These requirements hold advertisers accountable for the ads they run on Facebook and Instagram,” the social media giant wrote on its Facebook for Business website.

While political ads will be more transparent, the requirements are also designed to ensure that Facebook can list political advertisers in its Ad Library. Political ads from all of these new regions will now be added to the Ad Library API.

“We will introduce the Ad Library Report for each of these countries by the end of April. The report provides aggregated insights for ads about elections and politics, such as total number of ads and spends in the Ad Library. The report is also available as a downloadable file,” Facebook explained.

Political parties in the Balkans have often used social media in ways that are far from transparent during elections.

At the beginning of 2020, SHARE Foundation, a Serbia-based digital rights NGO, asked Facebook to put Serbia and North Macedonia on the list, citing the upcoming elections as the main reason. In its letter, SHARE said that if these two countries were on the list “the campaign will be more transparent.”

“This is especially important, since it is expected that Facebook pages which are not openly political might engage in supporting a certain political party or candidate with ads,” the letter adds.

Russian Court Rules Facial Recognition Doesn’t Violate Privacy

Posted on March 4, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court ruled on Tuesday that the facial recognition system launched on January 1 does not violate the privacy of citizens, paving the way for a 105,000-strong camera network to stay.

The decision was a blow to activists and opposition politicians who argued that the surveillance operation was illegal, Reuters reports.

The case against Moscow’s Department of Technology, DIT, was filed by lawyer and activist Alena Popova and opposition politician Vladimir Milov of the Solidarnost party in January.

They sought to ban use of the technology at mass events and protests and to delete all stored personal data previously collected.

“This ruling shows there are no legal defences for facial recognition complaints,” Popova’s lawyer, Kirill Koroteev, told the media.

The DIT is in charge of managing the surveillance network in Moscow. According to reports, it has spent 3.3 billion roubles, about $53.3 million, installing cameras and licensing facial recognition software to bring the network online.

During the court proceedings the system was on, with the Russian authorities using it to ensure that people who were ordered to remain at home or at hotels under the coronavirus quarantine are doing so.

Meanwhile, the DIT website says it uses the video surveillance system in crowded areas to “ensure safety”. It says that video footage is deleted within five days of an incident, unless a request by the public or law enforcement is made.

Following the first court hearing on January 31, rights watchdog Amnesty International said facial recognition systems posed a threat to Russian citizens’ privacy and human rights.

“In the hands of Russia’s already very abusive authorities, and in the total absence of transparency and accountability for such systems, it is a tool which is likely to take reprisals against peaceful protest to an entirely new level.

“It is telling that the Russian government has provided no explanation as to how it will ensure the right to privacy and other human rights, nor has it addressed the need for public oversight of such powerful technologies,” Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty’s Russia Director, said.

This is the second time that Popova has filed a lawsuit against the DIT concerning the video surveillance system.

She was previously fined for participating in a protest in Moscow in 2018, and claims that she was only identified with the use of facial recognition.

Last November, the Savelovsky District Court of Moscow refused to examine her claims that her right to privacy was undermined by the establishment of Moscow’s video surveillance system and the lawsuit was dismissed.

The face recognition system covering the whole Moscow underground transportation network is set to be fully operative by September 1.

French Court Rules against Facial Recognition in High Schools

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

A court in Marseille ruled on Thursday that authorities in France’s southeastern Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region had no power to authorise the use of facial recognition systems in two high schools in Nice and Marseille.

The city’s Administrative Court overturned the decision of regional authorities, ruling that only schools had the power to authorise such technology.

The court ruled that the decision breached the General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, as such systems are based on consent but students cannot give consent freely given the relationship of authority that binds them to the school’s administration.

“To my knowledge, this is the first judgment in France concerning the use of facial recognition technologies in public space,” said Alexis Fitzjohn O Cobhthaigh, a lawyer representing several associations that brought the case to court.

Disproportionate measure

The case stems from an experiment launched at the end of 2018 to equip the Ampère high school in Marseille and Les Eucalyptus in Nice with virtual access control devices, by which cameras would recognise high school students and grant them access and be able to follow the trajectory of people.

A number of digital and human rights organisations said the plan violated individual freedoms. France’s National Data Protection Commission, CNIL, also came out against it in October 2019, calling the experiment disproportionate and illegal.

“This installation cannot be implemented legally,” the head of the CNIL wrote to the regional authority in charge of approving the trials, according to a letter cited by the investigative website Mediapart.

According to French media, parents and teachers’ unions also opposed the experiment.

The Administrative Court ruled that using facial recognition to control access to high schools was a disproportionate measure.

Nevertheless, some French media reports said regional authorities were pressing ahead with the plan regardless of the court’s ruling.

Call for total ban

The case was brought in February 2019 by French advocacy group La Quadrature du Net, which works to promote and defend fundamental freedoms in the digital world.

“In France, this is the first court decision about facial recognition and the first success against it! We hope it will be followed by a series of other successes leading to the total ban of facial recognition,” the group wrote on their website on February 27.

La Quadrature du Net and 80 other civil society groups signed a joint letter on December 19 calling on French authorities to ban facial recognition for any purposes of security and surveillance, citing similar bans in San Francisco and other US cities.

“Facial recognition is a uniquely invasive and dehumanising technology, which makes possible, sooner or later, constant surveillance of the public space,” they wrote.

“It creates a society in which we are all suspects. It turns our face into a tracking device, rather than a signifier of personality, eventually reducing it to a technical object. It enables invisible control. It establishes a permanent and inescapable identification regime.”

Social Media a Help and Hindrance in Balkan Coronavirus Fight

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

Serbia has no confirmed cases of coronavirus yet, but on Tuesday a WhatsApp voice message began doing the rounds on social media claiming several people had already died from the virus in the capital, Belgrade.

“Doctors are strictly forbidden to talk about the virus,” the woman is heard saying on the message, which was published on several Serbian news portals.

A similar thing happened in neighbouring Croatia, where another WhatsApp message contained the claim that the first case had been recorded in the coastal city of Split, before authorities actually confirmed the first case in the capital, Zagreb, on February 25.

With its epicentre in Italy, Europe is grappling to contain the spread of Covid-19. In the Balkans, cases have been confirmed in Croatia, North Macedonia and Romania.

Governments and concerned experts and citizens in the region and elsewhere are taking to the Internet, social media and mobile phone messages to spread information.

But likewise they face what Italy’s foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, has called an “infodemic” of false information and scaremongering in the media and online.

In Serbia, the interior ministry said on Wednesday that its Department of High-Tech Crime was trying to identify the women who made the WhatsApp recording claiming that coronavirus had already claimed its first victims in the country.

In Albania, prosecutors on February 24 announced investigations into what they called the “diffusion of fake information or announcements in any form aimed at creating a state of insecurity and panic among the people.”

Scientist: Behaviour ‘not in line with magnitude of danger’

Serbia’s Health Ministry has launched a website dedicated to the coronavirus outbreak, regularly posting updates, news, advice, contacts and warnings for those coming to Serbia from affected areas.

On Wednesday in Moldova, the government began sending mobile phone text messages telling Moldovans what symptoms to look out for and what steps they should take if they suspect they may have contracted the respiratory virus.

“Take care of your health. Call your family doctor immediately if you have a fever or cough. If you have returned from areas with Coronavirus and feel ill, call 112,” the SMS reads.

Croatian scientist Igor Rudan of the Centre for Global Health Research at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, said on Wednesday the state of panic in Europe did not reflect the level of threat posed by Covid-19.

Even if the virus were to spread throughout Croatia, he wrote on Facebook, “the casualties should be at least roughly comparable with the number of cases of death from the flu or with the number of road traffic fatalities during the same period.”

“This panic is triggered by the persistent media coverage… rather than by generally accepted and scientifically-based knowledge about the coronavirus,” Rudan wrote.

“If you started behaving differently than you did during the winter months, during the flu epidemic, for example, collecting food supplies or wearing masks on the streets, this is not the kind of behaviour that reflects the actual magnitude of the danger.”

The post has been shared 2,500 times.

The Covid-19 outbreak originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December.

According to the World Health Organisation, there are now more than 82,000 confirmed cases in 45 countries.

In the Balkans, there are three confirmed cases in Croatia, one in North Macedonia and one in Romania. More than 180 people are under supervision in Montenegro. In Serbia, 20 people have tested negative for the virus, while several Serbian citizens who recently travelled to affected areas are in quarantine in Belgrade and the nearby town of Sabac, the public broadcaster reported.

EU Drafts ‘Human-Centric’ AI Plan to Match US, China

Posted on February 20, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The European Commission on Wednesday unveiled the white paper as a part of a European digital strategy on developing artificial intelligence, designed to compete with US and Chinese sector leaders while also addressing potential human rights abuses associated with this emerging technology.

“Europe’s digital transition must protect and empower citizens, businesses and society as a whole,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote in an op-ed that outlined the key points of the proposed blueprint.

“To make this happen, Europe needs to have its own digital capacities – be it quantum computing, 5G, cybersecurity or artificial intelligence,” Von der Leyen explained.

She said the Commission should make available the necessary funding to “draw in national and private sector funds” to develop these technologies within the EU, and ensure what she called “tech sovereignty” for the bloc.

According to the white paper, investment in artificial intelligence will be channelled through the Horizon Europe programme, which is to be allocated 15 billion euros in the coming 2021-2027 Commission budget.

The white paper provides also for further investment in adopting new legislation and building safe data spaces, in order to consolidate the EU’s leading role in data protection and assure “the development of AI in Europe whilst ensuring respect of fundamental rights”.

The cornerstone of the new legislation, to be gradually enforced in the EU space, the draft says, might be the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI. This is a set of recommendations drawn up by a panel of experts that was tested by companies in 2019.

The proposed strategy aspires to promote “a human-centric approach” to AI in line with “European values”. In order to ensure that, the paper advocates tough legislation to counter the risks to human rights of some of the more “intrusive” applications of AI, such as facial recognition and its use for remote identification.

Facial recognition is currently banned in the EU. The white paper aims to promote a “broad debate on which circumstances might justify exceptions in the future, if any,” the Commission noted in a statement.

Moreover, the document commits to putting in place a mechanism capable of identifying and banning any AI algorithms used in “predicting criminal recidivism” that “can display gender and racial bias, demonstrating different recidivism prediction probability for women vs men or for nationals vs foreigners”.

The white paper pledges to ensure that victims of abuse of artificial intelligence and other digital technologies do not encounter any more difficulties in getting compensation than victims of abuses of more traditional products and services.

The document also presents a proposed European Data Strategy, harmonized with the existing General Data Protection Regulation and intended to “create a genuine single market for data, where personal and non-personal data … are secure and where businesses and the public sector have easy access to huge amount of high quality data to create and innovate”.

EU Court Rules Against Romania In Cyber Domestic Abuse Case

Posted on February 12, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

A judgment issued on Tuesday by the European Court of Human Rights, ECHR, ordered Romania to pay a victim of domestic abuse 10,000 euros for failing to protect her when police refused to investigate her husband for breaching her internet privacy. The court recognised this as one of “the various forms that domestic violence may take”.

On 18 March 2014, the ruling recalled, newly divorced Gina-Aurelia Buturuga told the police that her ex-husband had accessed her email and Facebook accounts without permission. She had previously filed complaints against him, identified only as M.V. in the sentence, for domestic violence.

According to the judgment, Buturuga wanted the family computer examined after her former husband allegedly “made copies of her private conversations, documents and photos” that he found on her personal accounts.

But in June 2014, the police in Tulcea, eastern Romania, rejected the request, saying “that the information that might have been obtained was unrelated to the threats and violence charges formulated against M.V.,” the ruling reads.

In September 2014, Buturuga reported her husband to the police again for a “secrecy of correspondence violation”, and the complaint was registered and included in the investigation against her husband for alleged domestic violence.

However, the prosecution dismissed the case in February 2015, saying there was insufficient evidence to prove M.V. had subjected Buturuga to the physical violence she said she had suffered.

Alleged death threats were considered “not serious enough to qualify as a crime”. As for the “secrecy of correspondence violation”, prosecutors said it was not reported on time.

Before addressing the ECHR, Buturuga appealed to a Romanian court, which confirmed the prosecutors’ conclusion and also ruled that the material retrieved by her ex-husband from her social media accounts was already public when he accessed it. The case was closed without a court hearing and M.V. received a fine of 250 euros.

The ECHR concluded that the Romanian authorities failed to properly investigate the woman’s allegations of domestic abuse. It established that part of the information the ex-husband copied from her digital accounts was not public, as the Romanian judges had claimed. It said the authorities should have conducted a proper investigation to determine the nature of that information.

“The court considers that the authorities have shown excessive formalism in rejecting any connection with the acts of domestic violence which the applicant had already brought to their attention,” the ECHR said. “They thus failed to take into consideration the various forms that domestic violence may take.” According to the ruling, Romania has to pay Buturuga 10,000 euros in compensation for moral damage.

Montenegro Detains Activist for Predicting ‘War’ on Facebook

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

Montenegro’s state prosecution on Tuesday ordered civic activist Vesko Pejak to be put into custody for 72 hours for causing panic and disorder over a Facebook post predicting “war in Montenegro” – and for claiming that officials were provoking citizens who opposed the recently adopted law on religion.

The law has angered the largest faith group in the country, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and tens of thousands of people have been marching twice weekly in the streets in protest against it.

The Serbian Church, SPC, says it is designed to strip it of its property and land, which the government denies. Opposition political movements are also regular participants in the anti-government rallies.

The Center for Investigative Reporting in Montenegro, CIN-CG, said that by arresting people solely for their thoughts, the government threatened freedom of thought and expression, which is one of the cornerstones of democracy.

“We appeal to all actors in the public arena to take the greatest responsibility regard to the situation and not to exacerbate tensions,” the CIN-CG press release said.

“We urge the authorities to release Pejak and to no longer stifle freedom of speech and freedom of movement,” a member of the Alternative movement, Nikola Bezmarevic, told the media.

The main opposition group, the pro-Serbian Democratic Front also condemned the arrest.

The government has been clamping down hard lately on activists spreading “panic” on social media.

On January 24 police detained a well-known pro-Russian journalist, Igor Damjanovic, over his conversation on Facebook with another person who then filed a case against him. Damjanovic claimed the real reason for his detention was not his verbal exchange on Facebook but his long record of anti-NATO activism, which has irked the government.

On January 23 in a separate case concerning Facebook comments, police arrested Milija Goranovic from Niksic for allegedly insulting the country’s police chief, Veselin Veljovic. Media reports said Goranovic was fined 500 euros for telling Veljovic “not to talk rubbish” below a statement of the police director on Facebook.

One day after Goranovic was arrested, the US ambassador to Montenegro, Judy Rising Renke, reminded the government on twitter that freedom of speech was fundamental to democracy. “This really worries me. Public figures are routinely criticized and even insulted – it’s part of the job. I know. However, at the end of the day, we must defend the right to free speech,” she posted.

Two editors of local news websites, IN4S and Borba, Gojko Raicevic and Drazen Zivkovic, were detained on January 12 on suspicion of causing panic and public disorder. This was in connection with reports of an explosion at the Villa Gorica, a building in Podgorica used by the government for receptions. After they published their stories, some regional media republished the alleged information. The police later denied that any explosion had occurred and said that a minor electrical failure had occurred at the villa, which was soon repaired. They said Raicevic and Zivkovic were arrested for publishing information that had alarmed the public without checking the facts.

On January 5, the editor-in-chief of the Fos media website, Andjela Djikanovic was placed in detention for 72 hours for “causing panic and disorder” after claiming in an article that the government might call on security forces in neighbouring Kosovo to help quell Serbian Church supporters’ protests over the new legislation on religion.

The government has defended its tough response, however, saying it is coming under a systemic and organized attack. On January 14, the Culture Ministry said that the country had become the target of an organised “disinformation campaign” since it adopted the new law on religion. Authorities say they are the victims of a coordinated campaign to spread fake news, organised by a number of media outlets in the country and the region that are spreading religious and national hatred and violence.

‘Teenage Porn’ Network Scandal Rocks North Macedonia

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

The alleged founder of a social group called “Javna Soba” [Public Room], which is at the centre of a scandal in North Macedonia involving teen pornography, on Monday insisted that his original intention had been innocent.

This group, hosted by the Russian social network Telegram, hit the spotlight over the weekend after two news sites that managed to get access to the group reported that it served as an exchange for pornographic material – often from teenage girls.

The group originally had some 7,400 members, and according to the reports, in some instances, the group also contained the alleged identifies and even the phone numbers of the girls whose materials were shared, causing even greater concern.

“We wanted to make a group for sharing funny videos and in no case pornography,” the alleged administrator of the group who goes by the nickname “Medo” told local A1On news site, which broke the scandal in the first place.

But “things got out of control”, said the administrator, whose identity was not known to the news site, adding that ever since he had fruitlessly tried to close the group, although closing his personal account reportedly did not help.

The existence of this group, which cannot be joined without a direct invitation from a member, shocked North Macedonia over the weekend, raising concern about the safety of the private data of the children and teenagers, as well as about public morality.

A1On previously reported that it had spotted phone numbers listed in this group that were known to belong to local public figures.

On Sunday, the Interior Ministry said it was working on the case. “The computer crime and forensics sector has immediately contacted the ‘Telegram’ network in order to get the needed info on the functioning of this group,” ministry spokesperson Toni Angelovski said.

He urged people to report any misuse of photos regarding this and other possible cases.

Caretaker Prime Minister Oliver Spasovski told a press conference on Sunday that the group had only been formed recently, and had gained popularity very quickly.

“From the data I got from the Public Safety Bureau, a procedure has been launched … they are working on revealing the administrator and members of this group,” Spasovski said.

The head of the First Children’s Embassy – Megjashi, an NGO based in Skopje, Dragi Zmijanac, on Monday urged society to do more to prevent minors being abused.

“This is a moral degradation of the whole of society, where children are left on their own,” Zmijanac told the Sloboden Pecat news portal.

According to reports by A1On, the group is still active on Telegram, but since the scandal broke, under a different name – and with a drastically reduced membership.

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