A tribunal in Iasi in northeastern Romania has ordered the pre-trial detention of 30 days for a man arrested last Thursday for allegedly stealing half a million euros in crypto from a leading cryptocurrency operator, sources from the organised crime prosecution office told BIRN.
The victim of the fraud is a company based in the Cayman Islands, and the seventh-largest cryptocurrency operator in the world, prosecutors said in a statement.
According to the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism, DIICOT, the suspect broke into the system using the Application Programming Interface key, which he had fraudulently obtained before launching his cyberattack between January 28 and 31 this year.
After accessing the system, he transferred cryptocurrency worth 620,000 US dollars, or 520,000 euros, to the personal accounts of several people who paid him in real money for the digital assets.
“In order to hide the criminal deeds, the accused chose to take possession of the money through several withdrawals of small sums of 10,000 lei [around 2,000 euro] so he was not asked to provide an ID document,” the DIICOT statement said.
The operation that led to his arrest included raids in two locations from which seven cellphones, three laptops, five memory sticks as well as two e-wallets and 10,800 lei in cash were seized.
Romanian law enforcement agencies also sequestrated 40,000 lei from the account of one of the bitcoin traders who had bought stolen crypto from the accused.
The suspect will be charged with illegally accessing an informatic system, informatic fraud and money laundering.
Partners Serbia, a Belgrade-based NGO that works on initiatives to combat corruption and develop democracy and the rule of the law in the Balkan country, had been on Twitter for more than nine years when, in November 2020, the social media giant suspended its account.
Twitter gave no notice or explanation of the suspension, but Ana Toskic Cvetinovic, the executive director of Partners Serbia, had a hunch – that it was the result of a “coordinated attack”, probably other Twitter users submitting complaints about how the NGO was using its account.
“We tried for days to get at least some information from Twitter, like what could be the cause and how to solve the problem, but we haven’t received any answer,” Toskic Cvetinovic told BIRN. “After a month of silence, we saw that a new account was the only option.”
Twitter lifted the suspension in January, again without explanation. But Partners Serbia is far from alone among NGOs, media organisations and public figures in the Balkans who have had their social media accounts suspended without proper explanation or sometimes any explanation at all, according to BIRN monitoring of digital rights and freedom violations in the region.
Experts say the lack of transparency is a significant problem for those using social media as a vital channel of communication, not least because they are left in the dark as to what can be done to prevent such suspensions in the future.
But while organisations like Partners Serbia can face arbitrary suspension, half of the posts on Facebook and Twitter that are reported as hate speech, threatening violence or harassment in Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin or Macedonian remain online, according to the results of a BIRN survey, despite confirmation from the companies that the posts violated rules.
The investigation shows that the tools used by social media giants to protect their community guidelines are failing: posts and accounts that violate the rules often remain available even when breaches are acknowledged, while others that remain within those rules can be suspended without any clear reason.
Among BIRN’s findings are the following:
Almost half of reports in Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin or Macedonian language to Facebook and Twitter are about hate speech
One in two posts reported as hate speech, threatening violence or harassment in Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin or Macedonian language, remains online. When it comes to reports of threatening violence, the content was removed in 60 per cent of cases, and 50 per cent in cases of targeted harassment.
Facebook and Twitter are using a hybrid model, a combination of artificial intelligence and human assessment in reviewing such reports, but declined to reveal how many of them are actually reviewed by a person proficient in Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin or Macedonian
Both social networks adopt a “proactive approach”, which means they remove content or suspend accounts even without a report of suspicious conduct, but the criteria employed is unclear and transparency lacking.
The survey showed that people were more ready to report content targeting them or minority groups.
Experts say the biggest problem could be the lack of transparency in how social media companies assess complaints.
The assessment itself is done in the first instance by an algorithm and, if necessary, a human gets involved later. But BIRN’s research shows that things get messy when it comes to the languages of the Balkans, precisely because of the specificity of language and context.
Distinguishing harsh criticism from defamation or radical political opinions from expressions of hatred and racism or incitement to violence require contextual and nuanced analysis.
Half of the posts containing hate speech remain online
Graphic: BIRN/Igor Vujcic
Facebook and Twitter are among the most popular social networks in the Balkans. The scope of their popularity is demonstrated in a 2020 report by DataReportal, an online platform that analyses how the world uses the Internet.
In January, there were around 3.7 million social media users in Serbia, 1.1 million in North Macedonia, 390,000 in Montenegro and 1.7 million in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In each of the countries, Facebook is the most popular, with an estimated three million users in Serbia, 970,000 in North Macedonia, 300,000 in Montenegro and 1.4 million in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Such numbers make Balkan countries attractive for advertising but also for the spread of political messages, opening the door to violations.
The debate over the benefits and the dangers of social media for 21st century society is well known.
In terms of violent content, besides the use of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, social media giants are trying to give users the means to react as well, chiefly by reporting violations to network administrators.
There are three kinds of filters – manual filtering by humans; automated filtering by algorithmic tools and hybrid filtering, performed by a combination of humans and automated tools.
In cases of uncertainty, posts or accounts are submitted to human review before decisions are taken, or after in the event a user complaints about automated removal.
“Today, we primarily rely on AI for the detection of violating content on Facebook and Instagram, and in some cases to take action on the content automatically as well,” a Facebook spokesperson told BIRN. “We utilize content reviewers for reviewing and labelling specific content, particularly when technology is less effective at making sense of context, intent or motivation.”
Twitter told BIRN that it is increasing the use of machine learning and automation to enforce the rules.
“Today, by using technology, more than 50 per cent of abusive content that’s enforced on our service is surfaced proactively for human review instead of relying on reports from people using Twitter,” said a company spokesperson.
“We have strong and dedicated teams of specialists who provide 24/7 global coverage in multiple different languages, and we are building more capacity to address increasingly complex issues.”
In order to check how effective those mechanisms are when it comes to content in Balkan languages, BIRN conducted a survey focusing on Facebook and Twitter reports and divided into three categories: violent threats (direct or indirect), harassment and hateful conduct.
The survey asked for the language of the disputedcontent, who was the target and who was the author, and whether or not the report was successful.
Over 48 per cent of respondents reported hate speech, some 20 per cent reported targeted harassment and some 17 per cent reported threatening violence.
The survey showed that people were more ready to report content targeting them or minority groups.
According to the survey, 43 per cent of content reported as hate speech remained online, while 57 per cent was removed. When it comes to reports of threatening violence, content was removed in 60 per cent of cases.
Roughly half of reports of targeted harassment resulted in removal.
Chloe Berthelemy, a policy advisor at European Digital Rights, EDRi, which works to promote digital rights, says the real-life consequences of neglect can be disastrous.
“For example, in cases of image-based sexual abuse [often wrongly called “revenge porn”], the majority of victims are women and they suffer from social exclusion as a result of these attacks,” Berthelemy said in a written response to BIRN. “For example, they can be discriminated against on the job market because recruiters search their online reputation.”
Content removal – censorship or corrective?
Graphic: BIRN/Igor Vujcic.
According to the responses to BIRN’s questionnaire, some 57 per cent of those who reported hate speech said they were notified that the reported post/account violated the rules.
On the other hand, some 28 per cent said they had received notification that the content they reported did not violate the rules, while 14 per cent received only confirmation that their report was filed.
In terms of reports of targeted harassment, half of people said they received confirmation that the content violated the rules; 16 per cent were told the content did not violate rules. A third of those who reported targeted harassment only received confirmation their report was received.
As for threatening violence, 40 per cent of people received confirmation that the reported post/account violated the rules while 60 per cent received only confirmation their complaint had been received.
One of the respondents told BIRN they had reported at least seven accounts for spreading hatred and violent content.
“I do not engage actively on such reports nor do I keep looking and searching them. However, when I do come across one of these hateful, genocide deniers and genocide supporters, it feels the right thing to do, to stop such content from going further,” the respondent said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Maybe one of all the reported individuals stops and asks themselves what led to this and simply opens up discussions, with themselves or their circles.”
Although for those seven acounts Twitter confirmed they violate some of the rules, six of them are still available online.
Another issue that emerged is unclear criteria while reporting violations. Basic knowledge of English is also required.
Sanjana Hattotuwa, special advisor at ICT4Peace Foundation agreed that the in-app or web-based reporting process is confusing.
“Moreover, it is often in English even though the rest of the UI/UX [User Interface/User Experience] could be in the local language. Furthermore, the laborious selection of categories is, for a victim, not easy – especially under duress.”
Facebook told BIRN that the vast majority of reports are reviewed within 24 hours and that the company uses community reporting, human review and automation.
It refused, however, to give any specifics on those it employs to review content or reports in Balkan languages, saying “it isn’t accurate to only give the number of content reviewers”.
BIRN methodology
BIRN conducted its questionnaire via the network’s tool for engaging citizens in reporting, developed in cooperation with the British Council.
The anonymous questionnaire had the aim of collecting information on what type of violations people reported, who was the target and how successful the report was. The questions were available in English, Macedonian, Albanian and Bosnian/Serbian/Montenegrin. BIRN focused on Facebook and Twitter given their popularity in the Balkans and the sensitivity of shared content, which is mostly textual and harder to assess compared to videos and photos.
“That alone doesn’t reflect the number of people working on a content review for a particular country at any given time,” the spokesperson said.
Social networks often remove content themselves, in what they call a ‘proactive approach’.
According to data provided by Facebook, in the last quarter of 2017 their proactive detection rate was 23.6 per cent.
“This means that of the hate speech we removed, 23.6 per cent of it was found before a user reported it to us,” the spokesperson said. “The remaining majority of it was removed after a user reported it. Today we proactively detect about 95 per cent of hate speech content we remove.”
“Whether content is proactively detected or reported by users, we often use AI to take action on the straightforward cases and prioritise the more nuanced cases, where context needs to be considered, for our reviewers.”
There is no available data, however, when it comes to content in a specific language or country.
Facebook publishes a Community Standards Enforcement Report on a quarterly basis, but, according to the spokesperson, the company does not “disclose data regarding content moderation in specific countries.”
Whatever the tools, the results are sometimes highly questionable.
In May 2018, Facebook blocked for 24 hours the profile of Bosnian journalist Dragan Bursac after he posted a photo of a detention camp for Bosniaks in Serbia during the collapse of federal Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Facebook determined that Bursac’s post had violated “community standards,” local media reported.
Bojan Kordalov, Skopje-based public relations and new media specialist, said that, “when evaluating efficiency in this area, it is important to emphasise that the traffic in the Internet space is very dense and is increasing every second, which unequivocally makes it a field where everyone needs to contribute”.
“This means that social media managements are undeniably responsible for meeting the standards and compliance with regulations within their platforms, but this does not absolve legislators, governments and institutions of responsibility in adapting to the needs of the new digital age, nor does it give anyone the right to redefine and narrow down the notion and the benefits that democracy brings.”
Lack of language sensibility
Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/The Average Tech Guy
SHARE Foundation, a Belgrade-based NGO working on digital rights, said the question was crucial given the huge volume of content flowing through the likes of Facebook and Twitter in all languages.
“When it comes to relatively small language groups in absolute numbers of users, such as languages in the former Yugoslavia or even in the Balkans, there is simply no incentive or sufficient pressure from the public and political leaders to invest in human moderation,” SHARE told BIRN.
Berthelemy of EDRi said the Balkans were not a stand alone example, and that the content moderation practices and policies of Facebook and Twitter are “doomed to fail.”
“Many of these corporations operate on a massive scale, some of them serving up to a quarter of the world’s population with a single service,” Berthelemy told BIRN. “It is impossible for such monolithic architecture, and speech regulation process and policy to accommodate and satisfy the specific cultural and social needs of individuals and groups.”
The European Parliament has also stressed the importance of a combined assessment.
“The expressions of hatred can be conveyed in many ways, and the same words typically used to convey such expressions can also be used for different purposes,” according to a 2020 study – ‘The impact of algorithms for online content filtering or moderation’ – commissioned by the Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs.
“For instance, such words can be used for condemning violence, injustice or discrimination against the targeted groups, or just for describing their social circumstances. Thus, to identify hateful content in textual messages, an attempt must be made at grasping the meaning of such messages, using the resources provided by natural language processing.”
Hattotuwa said that, in general, “non-English language markets with non-Romanic (i.e. not English letter based) scripts are that much harder to design AI/ML solutions around”.
“And in many cases, these markets are out of sight and out of mind, unless the violence, abuse or platform harms are so significant they hit the New York Times front-page,” Hattotuwa told BIRN.
“Humans are necessary for evaluations, but as you know, there are serious emotional / PTSD issues related to the oversight of violent content, that companies like Facebook have been sued for (and lost, having to pay damages).”
Failing in non-English
Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Ann Ann
Dragan Vujanovic of the Sarajevo-based NGO Vasa prava [Your Rights] criticised what he said was a “certain level of tolerance with regards to violations which support certain social narratives.”
“This is particularly evident in the inconsistent behavior of social media moderators where accounts with fairly innocuous comments are banned or suspended while other accounts, with overt abuse and clear negative social impact, are tolerated.”
For Chloe Berthelemy, trying to apply a uniform set of rules on the very diverse range of norms, values and opinions on all available topics that exist in the world is “meant to fail.”
“For instance, where nudity is considered to be sensitive in the United States, other cultures take a more liberal approach,” she said.
The example of Myanmar, when Facebook effectively blocked an entire language by refusing all messages written in Jinghpaw, a language spoken by Myanmar’s ethnic Kachin and written with a Roman alphabet, shows the scale of the issue.
“The platform performs very poorly at detecting hate speech in non-English languages,” Berthelemy told BIRN.
The techniques used to filter content differ depending on the media analysed, according to the 2020 study for the European Parliament.
“A filter can work at different levels of complexity, spanning from simply comparing contents against a blacklist, to more sophisticated techniques employing complex AI techniques,” it said.
“In machine learning approaches, the system, rather than being provided with a logical definition of the criteria to be used to find and classify content (e.g., to determine what counts as hate speech, defamation, etc.) is provided with a vast set of data, from which it must learn on its own the criteria for making such a classification.”
Users of both Twitter and Facebook can appeal in the event their accounts are suspended or blocked.
“Unfortunately, the process lacks transparency, as the number of filed appeals is not mentioned in the transparency report, nor is the number of processed or reinstated accounts or tweets,” the study noted.
Between January and October 2020, Facebook restored some 50,000 items of content without an appeal and 613,000 after appeal.
Machine learning
As cited in the 2020 study commissioned by the European Parliament, Facebook has developed a machine learning approach called Whole Post Integrity Embeddings, WPIE, to deal with content violating Facebook guidelines.
The system addresses multimedia content by providing a holistic analysis of a post’s visual and textual content and related comments, across all dimensions of inappropriateness (violence, hate, nudity, drugs, etc.). The company claims that automated tools have improved the implementation of Facebook content guidelines. For instance, about 4.4 million items of drug sale content were removed in just the third quarter of 2019, 97.6 per cent of which were detected proactively.
When it comes to the ways in which social networks deal with suspicious content, Hattotuwa said that “context is key”.
While acknowledging advancements in the past two to three years, Hattotuwa said that, “No AI and ML [Machine Learning] I am aware of even in English language contexts can accurately identify the meaning behind an image.”
“With regards to content inciting hate, hurt and harm,” he said, “it is even more of a challenge.”
According to the Twitter Transparency report, in the first six months of 2020, 12.4 million accounts were reported to the company, just over six million of which were reported for hateful conduct and some 5.1 million for “abuse/harassment”.
In the same period, Twitter suspended 925,744 accounts, of which 127,954 were flagged for hateful conduct and 72,139 for abuse/harassment. The company removed such content in a little over 1.9 million cases: 955,212 in the hateful conduct category and 609,253 in the abuse/harassment category.
Toskic Cvetinovic said the rules needed to be clearer and better communicated to users by “living people.”
“Often, the content removal doesn’t have a corrective function, but amounts to censorship,” she said.
Berthelemy said that, “because the dominant social media platforms reproduce the social systems of oppression, they are also often unsafe for many groups at the margins.”
“They are unable to understand the discriminatory and violent online behaviours, including certain forms of harassment and violent threats and therefore, cannot address the needs of victims,” Berthelemy told BIRN.
“Furthermore,” she said, “those social media networks are also advertisement companies. They rely on inflammatory content to generate profiling data and thus advertisement profits. There will be no effective, systematic response without addressing the business models of accumulating and trading personal data.”
The wheels of justice in Serbia sorely need speeding up. But when President Aleksandar Vucic told reporters last month that it would be “very important” to introduce artificial intelligence into the courts, not everyone was reassured.
Vucic’s remark about ‘predictive justice’ and the advent of “new, real and important changes” came in the context of a year-end press conference covering the full gamut of government policy, so he did not dwell on the details.
Now some digital rights activists and legal experts are sounding the alarm about the need to put the issue to full public debate, after an extensive Chinese-built network of surveillance cameras was rolled out in the capital, Belgrade, in 2019 to the surprise of unaware residents.
From identifying likely re-offenders to catching welfare fraudsters, predictive justice is a fast-growing phenomenon, alarming rights organisations that warn that such software can encourage racial profiling and discrimination and threaten privacy and freedom of expression.
Lawyer Djordje Krivokapic, co-founder of the Belgrade-based digital rights NGO SHARE Foundation, said AI has uses in courts in terms of case-management, automation and assistance in decision-making. But its introduction needs to be properly debated, he said.
“This represents a serious change in our society and some public debate and public discussion on this issue in general should be initiated regardless of the level at which it is discussed – except perhaps at the first level when some types of predictive algorithms are used in case-management to speed up the justice system and make it more efficient,” Krivokapic told BIRN.
He warned of the potential for discrimination. “Artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms have a lot of specifics that can lead to increased discrimination – or new forms of discrimination – and special attention must be paid to this.”
The justice ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Uses and abuses
Serbia is already laying the ground for the use of AI in its public sector. In December 2019, the government adopted a strategy to develop the field over the period 2020-2025 and an Action Plan to enact the strategy was passed in June 2020.
Under the plan, the government will establish an Artificial Intelligence Council in the first quarter of this year. Neither document, however, discusses in detail the use of AI in the Serbian court system, which is notoriously slow and prone to political interference.
Besides a legislative framework, Serbia has also begun to automate case-storage and institutional communication in the judiciary.
Lawyer Milena Vasic from the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights-YUCOM, said AI was becoming “a kind of inevitability in almost all areas of life”, and criminal justice could not be an exception.
“In particular, we should keep in mind simpler cases, such as, for example, we now have thousands of lawsuits against banks for loan processing costs that have practically buried the judiciary, or mass lawsuits that most often occur due to a mistake by the state,” Vasic told BIRN.
“Certainly, the use of artificial intelligence could make it easier to manage such cases, but since it is software, we should also talk about potential abuses or artificially raising the number of resolved cases.”
Ana Toskic Cvetinovic, executive director of the NGO Partners for Democratic Change Serbia, also warned of potential issues around discrimination of marginalised groups.
“Regarding the use of AI in the judiciary, it raises a number of other issues such as the impact on access to justice and the right to a fair trial, or free judicial conviction, even when AI is used to support decision-making, and especially if it is AI that would possibly replace judges,” Toskic Cvetinovic told BIRN.
Some forms of predictive justice simply cannot yet be applied in Serbia, YUCOM’s Vasic said.
“In our law, case law is still not a formal source of law and we have a lot of problems with harmonisation of case law,” she said. “What is crucial, however, is to harmonise the position on case law at the ‘human’ level before resolving cases with new methods involving artificial intelligence.”
“Such systems can be easily imagined in countries of the common law system,” Vasic noted, but “even there they suffer serious criticism for violating the right of citizens to a fair trial and are still in the so-called test phase.”
Lack of transparency
Part of map of smart cameras in Belgrade, view on city center. Screenshot: hiljade.kamera.rs
Serbia is already pursuing greater automation, for example in terms of parking in Belgrade.
In August last year, authorities went live with a system named ‘Falcon Eye’ involving 20 specialised cars equipped with cameras that can identify improperly parked cars and take photos, resulting in fines for the registered owners sent by post. Then there’s the Chinese ‘Safe City’ network of surveillance cameras with the potential for licence plate recognition and facial recognition.
There has little or no public debate about the use of such technology, the introduction of which has been criticised as lacking transparency.
Toskic Cvetinovic warned that the “flaws” of AI would be magnified in Serbia given the country’s poor record of protecting human rights.
“In addition, the protection of citizens’ privacy has so far not been in focus when planning or implementing projects that involve mass processing of personal data,” Toskic Cvetinovic told BIRN.
“What worries me most is the fact that the most flagrant violations of this right came from institutions that have public functions, so the trust in new similar projects has been shaken, and with good reason.”
“There is no transparency in decision-making, nor any wider social discussion about whether we need such projects and what are their advantages and what are the possible consequences. A special question is – who manages these systems? How they are protected? Can be abused, etc?”
Krivokapic of SHARE Foundation said Serbia does not have the proper means of monitoring how such technology is used.
“We don’t have state bodies… that do any monitoring of the success in implementing the information system in the public sector, and in general all those tools that are procured, paid for and so on. There is no monitoring,” he said.
To Matjaz Bericic, chief technology officer at Telekom Slovenije, 5G is “not the destination, it is the journey”.
If that’s the case, the countries of the Balkans are at very different stages of that journey, but for all of them the potential benefits of the next cellular standard are vast, experts say.
“An early strategy on 5G deployment and frequency licencing could be a great opportunity for the region, as it can be seen as part of the advanced infrastructure that can attract investments from, for example, industrial production companies or multimedia production companies,” Petar Popovski, professor of wireless connectivity at Denmark’s Aalborg University, told BIRN.
“Reliable connectivity infrastructure becomes a must-have commodity, such as electricity or water,” he said.
In the Balkans, Slovenia is ahead of the rest, with Telekom, the country’s leading provider of ICT services, having already launched the first 5G mobile network in July this year. Slovenia is now one of 18 of the European Union’s 27 members with a 5G commercial network.
Bericic said the road to launch was long and complex, requiring advanced network technology and testing of the whole network chain – antennae systems, base stations, transfer systems, aggregation and core networks, services and terminal equipment. But the benefits are huge, he said.
“This evolutionarily upgrade allows users to achieve higher data transfer speeds than on the LTE/4G, while the full potential of 5G technology will become available after additional frequency bands are awarded,” Bericic told BIRN.
Various stages of rollout
Illustration. Photo: Unspash/James Yarema
Wireless connectivity experts say the Balkan region stands to benefit most from the reliable connectivity, infrastructure and services that 5G technology offers.
“The most important feature of 5G is that it is a flexible connectivity platform, capable to offer wide range of connections, from high-speed video streaming to low-latency tactile interactions with robots,” said Popovski.
At the end of November, Austrian mobile operator A1 launched a 5G network covering central areas, residential districts and business locations in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. In Croatia, A1 expects to make 5G available this month to more than 70 towns and cities.
Elsewhere in the region, Serbian mobile operator Telenor last year rolled out the first 5G base station in the country, in the Science Technology Park in the capital, Belgrade, and making it available for use by local and foreign companies, startups and students of technical faculties.
In North Macedonia, the Agency of Electronic Communications, AEK, expects to announce a tender for the allocation of radio frequencies for the introduction of 5G by the end of this year or the beginning of next, said AEK adviser Igor Bojadjiev.
“At the moment, from a technical and from a legal point of view, Macedonia has provided all the necessary conditions for starting the implementation of 5G,” Bojadjiev told BIRN.
North Macedonia is counting on 5G to aid the country’s economic development and the development of a national wireless ecosystem.
“The future economic and social development of Macedonia will largely depend on the development of new wireless technologies and digitalisation in all social spheres,” Bojadjiev said.
Vladimir Atanasovski, Vice Dean for Finance at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies in the capital, Skopje, said the early adoption of 5G “may provide a crucial advantage for Macedonia companies, making them more competitive on the international market.”
“5G can drive the economic development of a country by supporting both traditional manufacturers (that will embrace the technologies made practically usable by 5G) and novel and innovative companies that come up with products and solutions in the areas of data gathering, data analysis, associated artificial intelligence and machine learning concepts etc,” Atanasovski told BIRN.
Businesses already reaping the benefits
A 5G logo. Photo: EPA-EFE/WILL OLIVER+
Across Europe, businesses and industries are already starting to reap the benefits of 5G networks.
The technology’s impact can be seen in industries ranging from smart production to agriculture, transport and energy. Some countries are taking 5G usage to the next level.
“For example, Germany started very early to licence frequencies for private 5G networks,” said Popovski, of Aalborg University.
“Those frequencies can be owned within a restricted area (for example, a factory) and the owner can control interference to offer predictable link performance, which is not the case with the technologies using unlicensed access, such as Wifi.”
In Central Europe, Czech-based 2N Telekomunikace, which specialises in the development and manufacturing of communication solutions, is already working on projects which include the use of 5G.
“5G will be a game-changer in terms of unlocking the potential of the IoT and making smart cities a reality,” CEO Michal Kratochvil told BIRN.
“It will offer great opportunities for almost every industry. We at 2N are particularly excited about it because our IP access control products are already part of the smart city solution and are a natural fit into the 5G ecosystem.”
‘In the pandemic period’
A woman wears a protective face mask in Zagreb, Croatia, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANTONIO BAT+
Some companies also expect 5G technology to have a big impact on transport and infrastructure.
For example, Rail Baltica, an international railway project spanning the Baltic states, is considering 5G technology for projects such as strengthening railway security, together with the use of drone technology.
Earlier this year, Latvian mobile operator LMT successfully completed the first ever cross-border drone flight conducted entirely over the mobile network. 5G offers even greater potential.
“If there’s sufficient coverage in the air, the mobile network can ensure uninterrupted connectivity throughout the entirety of its flight, which significantly improves safety,” said LMT Vice President Ingmars Pukis. “LMT’s strong network coverage makes drone flight and other 5G use case testing a possibility.”
Such developments offer hope for up-and-coming industries in the Balkans.
“5G also supports efficient simultaneous connections of a large number of devices, which will facilitate the development of smart industry, smart cities and communities and, through the option of network slicing, provide continued digitalisation of the economy and the introduction of numerous virtual dedicated (campus) networks,” said Bericic, of Telekom Slovenije.
The introduction of these “campus” networks would mean that a single physical infrastructure can host several virtual dedicated networks for various business verticals, such as energy supply, transportation, logistics, manufacturing, smart cities, healthcare, protection and rescue…
“We can hardly imagine living without the proper support of high capacity mobile services at every step, especially also now in pandemic period,” Bericic told BIRN. “Same goes for communication through different apps, unlimited access to information, social networks or the option of remote learning or remote work.”
On the morning of Friday, March 13, the duty nurses at the University Hospital in the Czech city of Brno received emergency guidelines on conducting essential meetings.
The Czech Republic had just declared a strict nationwide lockdown and organisations across the country were scrambling to move their meetings online. But the hospital in Brno, bracing for its first wave of Covid patients, was going the other way.
The emergency guidelines said all operational matters must be discussed face-to-face rather than online, in team meetings to be held at regular intervals several times a day.
The measures worked, and the virus – a form of ransomware that had paralysed the hospital’s computers – was eventually contained.
“You cannot prepare for a situation like that,” recalls Branislav Moravcik, the head nurse at the hospital’s Clinic of Anaesthesiology, Resuscitation and Intensive Resuscitation. “The key is not to panic.”
Moravcik learnt of the cyber-attack in the early hours of Friday morning. Upon reaching work, he backed up his most important data on a flash drive and shared the emergency guidelines with his team.
With computers and medical equipment linked to the IT network shutting down around him, he sent the guidelines using a personal laptop tethered to his mobile phone’s internet connection.
Were such an attack to happen again, Moravcik said, it would be helpful if staff could draw upon planned protocols, as well as mandatory training, to work out what to do.
Healthcare workers care for COVID-19 patient in the department of anaesthesiology, resuscitation and intensive care medicine (ICU) at General University Hospital in Prague, Czech Republic. Photo: EPA-EFE/MARTIN DIVISEK.
The incident at the University Hospital in Brno was one of several cyber-attacks or attempted cyber-attacks targeting Czech medical facilities this spring.
In mid-April, hospitals in Ostrava, Olomouc and Carlsbad reported malicious activity in their IT systems, just days after the National Cyber and Information Security Agency, NUKIB, had issued a warning signalling the imminent threat of such attacks. As is usually the case, there was no clue to the hackers’ identity beyond the strings of numbers denoting their IP addresses.
These incidents revived a debate in mainstream media outlets about the state of the Czech public sector’s IT infrastructure, accompanied by speculation that the hacks might have been the work of foreign powers such as Russia and China.
The Czech government responded by pledging to upgrade its cyber defences. But as the country faces a second, deadlier surge of coronavirus infections over the winter, cyber-security experts are once again questioning the healthcare system’s ability to withstand attack at a time of crisis.
Experts interviewed by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, have said any investment in technical solutions must be accompanied by large-scale staff training in the basics of digital hygiene. Expensive upgrades, they argued, could only be as effective as the weakest links in the system – the tens of thousands of individuals who accessed public sector IT networks every day.
“The human factor plays a big role in cyber security,” said Michal Salat, Director of Threat Intelligence at Avast, a Prague-based provider of anti-viral software that helped Brno’s University Hospital deal with the aftermath of the attack. “It is easier to trick a person than it is to hack into a system.”
Hackers often use seemingly innocuous e-mails to convince individuals to provide the confidential details or download the infected files that end up compromising entire networks. Salat said stressed-out, busy workers – such as those staffing a hospital during a pandemic – would be particularly vulnerable to such “social engineeering” tactics.
To minimise the risk, he said, medical facilities should keep their software up to date, make constant backups of important data, and train staff in best practices for digital hygiene as they do for other forms of hygiene.
Digital-hygiene lessons would have to be repeated at regular intervals for their message to be re-enforced. Jan Kozanek, a cybersecurity specialist at the Accenture consultancy, warned of long-ingrained bad habits in the public sector, describing how any visitor to a local hospital was free to check standards for themselves with a little test. “Just count how many times you can spot passwords written on a piece of paper” near a computer workstation, he told BIRN.
‘Only an amateur would leave tracks’
Hospitals’ overwhelming reliance on IT systems to provide urgent care has made them popular targets for hackers seeking to extort money. Ransomware attacks, in which hackers encrypt data and demand payment for restoring access, have been reported at medical facilities across the US and Europe this year.
An attack on a hospital in the German city of Dusseldorf in September was investigated for having caused the death of a seriously ill patient, in what was thought to be the first such case of its kind. The investigation was however dropped as there was not enough evidence that the hack had led to the death. The best-known such attack remains the 2017 “Wannacry” hack that plunged the UK’s National Health Service into crisis, leaving computer screens frozen with messages demanding ransom payments.
This year’s cyber-attacks in the Czech Republic fit within this global trend, as well as within a narrower trend for hacks targeting the country’s public sector IT infrastructure. In June last year, for instance, NUKIB reported that the Czech foreign ministry’s e-mail servers had been targeted by hackers. This April, the country’s main travel hub, the Vaclav Havel Airport, said it had thwarted an attack on its IT system.
Healthcare workers transport a COVID-19 patient to Motol University Hospital after transfer from Zlin region, in Prague, Czech Republic. Photo: EPA-EFE/MARTIN DIVISEK.
Both the EU and the US issued statements criticising the cyber-attacks in the Czech Republic this spring. Several Czech media outlets went further, accusing Russia of orchestrating the hacks – a claim described by the Russian embassy in Prague as a “provocation”. Russia has major business interests in the country and its government is frequently accused of trying to influence Czech politics, as well as public opinion through disinformation campaigns. Similar accusations have also been directed at China, another global player with interests in the Czech economy.
Experts are however cautious about claims that foreign governments are involved in the recent hacks. According to Yuval Ben-Itzhak, the former CEO of Israeli cyber-security firm, Finjan, who currently heads the Prague-based digital marketing company, Socialbakers, state actors prefer making discreet inroads into IT infrastructure over high-profile hacks. “Governments want to have access on a long-term basis, not visibility in the news,” he told BIRN.
Alexandra Alvarova, a writer on disinformation tactics in the Czech Republic, said claims of Russian involvement in the hacks would most likely remain unverified unless there was a high-profile defection from the ranks of its intelligence service. “In this business, only an amateur would leave tracks, and Russian intelligence hackers are some of the best in the world,” she told BIRN.
Czech lawmakers are currently seeking to amend laws in order to give NUKIB a bigger role in defending hospitals from cyber-attack. NUKIB spokesman Jiri Taborsky said the legislative changes are a response to a “long-term, unsatisfactory situation” in the Czech healthcare system’s cyber-defences.
“This situation in turn reflects long-term under-investment in hardware and software infrastructure, as well as in human resources,” he told BIRN in an emailed statement. “NUKIB has been warning of this every year in its annual report on the state of cyber-security.”
The agency said it was also providing “educational materials and courses to help medical staff nationwide educate themselves” about the cyber threat.
‘Working crazy hours’
While claims of foreign involvement in specific hacks are rarely proven, the view that the Czech Republic is lagging behind in cyber-security matters has become a vote-winner.
The 2017 general election delivered a breakthrough for the Pirates Party, a new political formation that won the third-largest share of votes with a tech-savvy message that appealed to younger voters. A legislator for the party, Ondrej Profant, told BIRN that the country’s older governing class simply “did not understand the digital world – they lack the elementary habits”.
He acknowledged that the government had prioritised cyber-security following the attacks this spring, and praised NUKIB’s new digital-hygiene guidelines for staff at public offices. However, he warned, more training was needed.
“We are willing to invest in expensive technologies which improve our security by some margin against highly sophisticated attacks, but we forget about the staff at the main entrance,” he said. “It is as if we are building a very high wall to protect ourselves but leaving the door unlocked.”
It is moreover uncertain how much of an impact additional training will have on everyday habits in Czech hospitals. Apolena Rychlikova, a journalist who has reported on the healthcare system, said the effectiveness of digital-hygiene training would also depend on variables such as staff members’ age and workload.
“In general, medical facilities were understaffed and people were working crazy hours – and that was before the pandemic,” she told BIRN.
Albin Sybera is a journalist and Visegrad Insight fellow based in Ljubljana. This article was edited by Neil Arun. It was produced with a Reporting Democracy grant for stories that reveal how the Covid-19 crisis is reshaping politics and society in Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe.
In research published on Monday, Citizen Lab, an Institute of the University of Toronto that specializes in surveillance issues, listed 25 countries and agencies – including Serbia’s Security Information Agency – that use the software of the Israeli company Circles, which enables the user to locate every phone in the country in seconds.
Founded in 2008, Circles reportedly exploits weaknesses in the global mobile phone system to snoop on calls, texts, and the locations of phones around the globe.
Circles is a part of NSO Group, an iPhone and Android spyware developer that is being sued by Facebook over attacks on the accounts of 1,400 WhatsApp users.
It has also been criticized for selling its services to governments that use it to spy on activists, journalists and other citizens, according to Forbes.
Circles, whose products work without hacking the phone itself, says it sells only to nation-states, but Citizen Lab’s research, based on leaked documents, shows that clients can purchase a system that they connect to their local telecommunications companies’ infrastructure, or they can use a separate system called the “Circles Cloud,” which interconnects with telecommunications companies around the world.
According to Citizen Lab, likely Circles customers include governments in Australia, Belgium, Botswana, Chile, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Bill Marczak, from the University of California in Berkley, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab, said the investigation should raise awareness on the wider issues. “We hope this report enables people to ask more precise questions and perhaps even improve the regulation of the field, which today operates as if it were the Wild West,” Marczak told Calcalyst.
But an NSO spokesperson told Forbes in the name of both NSO and Circles that they operate with “a commitment to ethical business and adhere to strict laws and regulations in every market in which they operate”.
“We cannot comment on a report we have not seen. Given Citizen Lab’s track record, we imagine this will once again be based on inaccurate assumptions and without a full command of the facts. As ever, we find ourselves being asked to comment on an unpublished report from an organization with a predetermined agenda,” the spokesperson said.
The technique used by the Circles tech is known as Signaling System 7 (SS7) exploitation. A SS7 is a protocol suite developed in 1975 for exchanging information and routing phone calls between different wireline telecommunications companies, the Citizen Lab report says.
In its research, the Toronto-based laboratory notes that whileabuse of the global telephone system for tracking and monitoring is believed to be widespread, it is difficult to investigate. When a device is tracked or messages are intercepted, there are not always traces on the target’s device, the report warns.
Between 10 and 12 August this year, the Romanian government websites hosting the draft law that establishes the conditions for eligibility to implement 5G technology in the country – which implicitly bans Huawei – were flooded with suspicious-looking messages.
Signed by users bearing mostly Romanian but also Chinese names, they all expressed the same critical view about the legislation in question: that it would be very unwise to exclude Huawei from the race and that Romania’s interests would be seriously harmed if this happened.
Although citizens had 13 days to make comments on the law, all of these messages were registered over 72 consecutive hours. Before that time, or after it, no such comment was uploaded on the websites.
Most of the messages shared another dubious trait: they were either written in broken English or equally deficient Romanian, which suggested they had been Google translated, produced by some sort of automatic mechanism or filed by people with only a superficial knowledge of either language.
The flood of near-identical messages gives some idea of how aggressively Huawei is fighting its ban in Romania, which responds to national security concerns first raised by the US, which has prevented the use of Huawei technology in sensitive telecommunications at home and wants its allies to follow suit.
The US considers the company “an arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance state” and the US Department of Justice has indicted Huawei “for stealing US technology, conspiracy wire fraud, bank fraud, [and] racketeering”, among other charges.
In Romania, both the centre-right President, Klaud Iohannis, and his allied government have repeatedly voiced full alignment with the US in this matter. In July 2019, Romania became the first country in the world to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the US, committing it to barring Huawei from developing its 5G technology.
The draft legislation to materialize this, presented by the government on August 5, effectively bans the Chinese giant from the country by excluding companies with hazy ownership structures or that are controlled by a foreign government, have a history of unethical behaviour or are not subjected to an independent justice system in their home country.
While the final draft awaits a vote in Romania’s parliament, Huawei keeps opposing its exclusion tooth and nail through all the available channels.
Its latest action started on September 11, when the company sent the European Commission an open letter claiming the legislation put forward to ban the company in Romania and Poland was based on “biased and ambiguous criteria” designed to target “certain 5G suppliers because of their geographic origin.”
Huawei called on the Commission to take measures against “these legislative proposals that are contrary to the fundamental principles of the EU”, including non-discrimination, legal certainty and fair competition.
General view of the headquarters of the Romanian branch of Huawei, the Chinese multinational technology company that provides telecommunications equipment and sells consumer electronics, Bucharest, Romania, 09 September 2019. Archive photo: EPA-EFE/ROBERT GHEMENT
In line with the arguments of the industrially produced comments on the draft law uploaded in August to Romanian government websites, Huawei said its exclusion would “harm European industry, damage European economy, and weaken Europe’s digital resilience” as well as negatively impact job creation – all of it this time in impeccable English.
Huawei is also working on the public opinion front. In recent months, the Chinese giant has published numerous paid content pieces underscoring its importance for Romania’s economy and telecommunications sector, in a bid to gain popular support in its battle to enter the 5G implementation race in the country.
The US ambassador to Romania, Adrian Zuckerman, has fought back, accusing “Huawei and the Chinese embassy” of trying “to mislead the people of Romania” through these actions. The ambassador also reproached “some Romanian press outlets” for “so easily succumbing to the power of the almighty RON [Romania’s currency] and publishing propaganda for these corrupt entities and Communists”.
With upcoming legislative election set for December 6, Romania’s centre-right minority government is running out of time to try to get the Huawei ban adopted in a highly fragmented parliament, where the opposition Social Democratic Party, PSD, has the largest number seats. Most likely, the draft legislation will be voted on during the next term.
Several other EU governments have heeded US warnings and have moved to exclude Huawei from 5G technology development in their countries. Sweden was the last to join a list that includes the UK and several Central and Eastern European states such as Kosovo, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Slovakia, which in October signed separate agreements with th US on that matter.
Globally, Huawei seems to be relying on a softer US policy to China under a Joe Biden administration to regain access to the foreign 5G markets from which it has been barred, as the company’s vice-president, Victor Zhang, told the UK Guardian in an interview about the Chinese firm’s perspectives in the UK.
In the case of Romania, Huawei’s only hope seems to be that the Social Democrats, now in opposition, prove pollsters wrong and win a fresh majority in the December 6 parliamentary elections.
The ruling centre-right National Liberal Party, PNL, firmly opposes Huawei’s participation in 5G technology, as does the country’s third largest party, the centrist USR-Plus alliance.
“We support the memorandum signed with the US on this matter as well as the position of many EU countries; this is, ‘NO’ Huawei for the 5G network of Romania,” USR PLUS parliamentarian Catalin Drula told BIRN. If the PNL does not get a sufficient majority with the support of smaller traditional allies, it might need to form a government with the USR PLUS alliance after December 6.
Less prone to close ranks with the US and the EU, the Social Democrats do not have a clear position on the Huawei file. Contacted by BIRN by telephone, its leader, Marcel Ciolacu, declined to comment on its position on Huawei, or anticipate how will his party vote when the 5G law reaches parliament: “Let’s wait to see the body of the law and then I will give you an opinion,” he said.
Turkey’s Competition Board has fined the US tech giant Google 196.6 million Turkish lira, equal to 21.8 million euros, after an investigation into the company concluded that it had violated fair competition rules with its advertising strategies.
“Google violated the terms of fair competition by using aggressive competition tactics,” the competition board said.
In effect, Google made it difficult for companies to show up in searches if it did not generate advertisement revenue for Google.
The tech firm defended itself on November 4 in a case which it was accused of “abusing its dominant power in the search engine market” to quash its rivals in the market with its advertisement strategies.
The Competition Board has also given Google six months to fulfil its requirements and end its unfair advertisement strategy.
Google will also have to deliver annual reports to the board about the advertisement strategy of its search engine for five years.
This is the second time that the Turkish Competition Board has fined Google. In September 2018, it was fined 98 million Turkish lira for violating fair competition law by prioritizing certain vendors over others in terms of advertisement space.
Google’s advertisement strategy has come under EU scrutiny as well.
In 2018, the European Commission fined Google 4.34 billion euros for violating European antitrust rules on online advertising following an earlier fine of 2.4 billion in 2017.
In March 2019 it received another fine of 1.5 billion euros for abusing its dominance to stop websites using brokers other than its own advertisement platform AdSense, bringing the total in EU fines to over 8 billion euros.
Google has a right to lodge an appeal against the judgment in the next 60 days.
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.
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