Montenegro’s government confirmed on Monday that it will pay compensation of 300 euros each, of a total of 816,000 euros, to citizens on the list of people ordered to self-isolate during 2020 whose names were published.
According to government data, 2,720 persons filed lawsuits against the state for publishing their names on lists of people ordered to self-isolate.
“Last December, the government agreed to pay 300 euros each in damages to every citizen whose name was published on those lists. The compensation will be paid for violation of personal rights by publishing personal data,” the government told BIRN.
Podgorica-based lawyer Dalibor Kavaric, who represented most of the citizens filing lawsuits, said the government had violated their human rights despite its claims that this was done in the public interest.
“The state has an obligation to protect the rights of every citizen even when it comes to the public health interest. When those lists were published, there was increased fear in the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of that, those people were stigmatized, as they were presented as a public threat,” Kavaric told BIRN.
“We are not satisfied with the amount of compensation, as it should be at least ten times higher,” he added.
The government published the names on March 21, 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite warnings from opposition parties and civic society organisations that it risked violating their constitutionally guaranteed human rights. They also warned that citizens whose names were published might sue the state.
The government insisted it had a right to publish the names because some citizens were not respecting self-isolation obligations.
It said it had approval for its actions from the Agency for Personal Data Protection. It also stressed that the security forces could not control every citizen who should be in self-isolation and that anyone who failed to self-isolate posed a threat to the community.
On March 22, 2020, then Prime Minister Dusko Markovic said no compromises would be made with those who violated preventative measures amid the pandemic. He also warned that the government would continue to publish the names of citizens who had been ordered to self-isolate.
“The lives of our citizens are the priority. We have estimated that the right to health and life is above the right to unconditional protection of personal data,” Markovic said.
But after the Civic Alliance NGO submitted an appeal to the Constitutional Court, on July 23, 2020, the court annulled the government’s decision to publish the names of citizens ordered to self-isolate – although it did not rule that the government had violated their rights. The government then removed the list from its website.
In last year’s progress report, the European Commission urged Montenegro to award compensation for the publication of the names, warning that the government had violated people’s constitutional right to privacy.
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.
Rights groups in Montenegro are warning of a threat to data privacy rights, free speech and media freedoms in the former Yugoslav republic under cover of the government’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Montenegro, a country of some 630,000 people, has at least 29 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and one death. Since the outbreak, police have stepped up action against those accused of spreading false information and, ignoring the protests of opposition and rights organisations, published the names of people required to self-isolate due to the virus.
The country, which has been run by the same party for the past three decades, has a long record of restricting human rights and violating data privacy rights.
Activists fear the government will exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to clamp down further. The government says its overriding priority is to protect the lives and health of Montenegrin citizens.
“I am afraid that an attempt to deal with one danger could create another danger,” said Daliborka Uljarevic, executive director of the Podgorica-based Centre for Civic Education.ducation.
Dozens arrested
On March 13, a court imposed 30 days custody for a Montenegrin man who wrote on Facebook that state officials were concealing the true extent of the pandemic.
On March 22, another man was arrested on suspicion of falsely claiming that he had been infected.
The next day, police announced that 60 people had been charged with violating the restrictions imposed by the government to combat the spread of COVID-19, including those accused of spreading ‘fake news’ and others who opened restaurants after the government ordered them closed.
The same day, in the coastal town of Kotor, a Russian citizen was arrested after she wrote on Instagram that around 1,000 people had been infected by the virus in Montenegro and that six people had died of complications.
Authorities have used such tactics before, arresting two NGO activists in January over their Facebook posts during protests organised by the Serbian Orthodox Church against a controversial freedom of religion law. Three journalists were also detained on suspicion of causing panic and public disorder in their writing.
Concern over government respect for law
Uljarevic said the government had performed well so far in combating the virus, but that it should work more closely with all social and political actors.
“As a society we are facing a big problem and it requires the institutional mobilisation of a wider range of socio-political actors, especially when it comes to some moves that have an effect on different structures and can lead to the vulnerability of parts of society,” Uljarevic told BIRN.
Opposition Social Democratic Party, SDP, MP Rasko Konjevic said the government should make it stays within the law in dealing with the pandemic.
“This situation is extremely serious and it is important for the state to show its organisation and strength but not to forget the Constitution and laws,” he said. “It’s important that we are all equal before the law.”
Concern rose on March 22 when the government published the names of those people ordered to self-isolate, arguing that some had chosen not to respect the order.
The government said it had received the consent of the Agency for Personal Data Protection, and the the lives and health of Montenegrin citizens came first.
Opposition parties and civil society groups were outraged.
Further concerns have been raised over a number of economic decisions issued by the government without consulting parliament, despite provisions in the constitution that specify such decisions can only be taken by the government under a state of emergency. Montenegro has not declared a state of emergency.
Konjevic said the government should consult more widely. “They could share responsibility with others,” he said.
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