Tag: poland

Pegasus Phone-Hacking Spyware Victims Named in Poland

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, an internet watchdog that has been investigating the use of military-grade spyware from Israeli company NSO Group by authoritarian governments, said on Tuesday that the first two confirmed victims of phone-hacking using the Pegasus software in Poland are prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek and lawyer Roman Giertych.

Pegasus essentially turns infected phones into spying devices, making those who deploy the spyware able to access all data on the target’s phone, including messages and contacts.

The Associated Press, which first reported the new Citizen Lab findings on Tuesday, said that it cannot be confirmed who ordered the targeting of the two Poles.

Both targets have indicated that they suspect the Polish government.

In response to an inquiry from the AP, Polish state security spokesman Stanislaw Zaryn neither confirmed nor denied whether the government ordered the hacks.

Wrzosek is a well-known independent prosecutor who opposes the Polish government’s controversial justice reforms.

She also ordered an investigation into whether the 2020 presidential elections, which were organised during the pandemic, should have been postponed because they were too risky. Two days after she launched the case, she was transferred to a distant provincial town.

Giertych has been acting as lawyer for high-profile opposition politicians, including former Prime Minister Donald Tusk and former Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski.

He also defended an Austrian developer who revealed the involvement of ruling Law and Justice Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski in a huge real estate deal to build to skyscrapers in the centre of Warsaw, which caused a major scandal.

Earlier this year, an international investigation by 17 media organisations found that the Hungarian government was among those that acquired the controversial Pegasus software from Israeli surveillance company NSO and used it to target a range of journalists, businessmen and activists.

No targets in Poland or other central European countries were identified at the time, but Citizen Lab warned that it had detected spyware infections in Poland dating back to November 2017.

Poles Protest Against Law Silencing Foreign-Owned Media

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Poles protested in 126 towns across the country over the weekend against what has been dubbed “Lex TVN”, a law prohibiting ownership of media operating in Poland by companies outside the European Economic Area – the European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

The law only needs the signature of President Andrzej Duda to come into force. In the past, he expressed reservations about greenlighting it straight away.

Ever since it was proposed in the summer, the law was understood to be targeting TVN, the largest private television station in Poland, owned by US company Discovery, Inc. and which often criticises the ruling Law and Justice Party, PiS.

Both the EU and the US have voiced concern. US State Department spokesman Ned Price’s statement on Friday said: “The United States is deeply troubled by the passage in Poland today of a law that would undermine freedom of expression, weaken media freedom, and erode foreign investors’ confidence in their property rights and the sanctity of contracts in Poland.”

“Once this bill becomes a law, the Commission will not hesitate to take action in case of non-compliance with EU law,” Vera Jourova, European Commission Vice-President for Values and Transparency warned in a statement.

TVN is owned by Discovery via a company registered in The Netherlands, but the new bill would make it impossible for TVN to operate as before even with this ownership structure.

Discovery on Friday urged President Duda not to sign the bill. Over the summer, the company had indicated it would fight back, possibly taking legal action under the terms of a longstanding bilateral treaty between the US and Poland.

The adoption of “Lex TVN” forms part of an ongoing assault on media freedom in Poland ever since PiS came to power in 2015.

The governing party first established political control over public media, then rechannelled public advertising away from independent media to the channels it controls; and, at the end of 2020, the state-controlled energy giant PKN Orlen took over the company owning most local and regional media in the country.

By Monday morning, 2 million people had signed an appeal to President Duda not to pass the law, which the text describes as an attack not only on media freedom but also on democracy.

Representatives of all major democratic opposition parties and independent media took part in this weekend’s protest actions.

Polish Authorities Intimidate Journalists at Belarus Border

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

People in Polish Army uniform on Tuesday attacked three photojournalists working in Wiejka, a village near Michalowo, in the Podlaskie region, next to the border with Belarus, a statement put out on Wednesday by the Polish Press Club said.

The three journalists are named as Maciej Nabrdalik, a World Press Photo winner whose photos have appeared in The New York Times, Maciej Moskwa, from the documentary collective Testigo, and Martin Divisek, from the European Pressphoto Agency.

The three said the incident happened after they documented the presence of Polish armed forces around Wiejka – and that they had informed the army before taking any photos. The incident took place outside the state of the emergency zone, which blocks access of journalists to a three-kilometre-wide stretch of land along the border with Belarus.

According to the three, after they had finished their job and got back in the car to leave, people in Polish Army uniform – they never identified themselves, despite requests – blocked their path and dragged them out of the car, using obscenities.

The journalists said they were handcuffed and detained for an hour until the police came. In the meanwhile, the men in army uniforms searched the car as well as the memory cards of the camera, despite the journalists pointing out that this would breach the right to journalistic professional secrecy.

Photos posted by the Polish Press Club clearly show bruises on the wrists of the journalists, where the handcuffs would have been placed.

The incident occurred after, at the weekend, Polish police and border guards in the border area intimidated BIRN’s own team on the ground, made up of this reporter and Dutch-American photojournalist Jaap Arriens.

Early on November 14, a mixed team of both police and border guards (based on their uniforms) pulled over the car the BIRN journalists were travelling in near a checkpoint at Czeremcha, just outside the emergency zone. The uniformed officers demanded the International Mobile Equipment Identity numbers, IMEI, of the two journalists’ phones. The IMEI is a unique identifier for a mobile phone that enables it to be tracked.

When the journalists asked about the legal basis of this demand, the uniformed officers said the journalists were suspected of having stolen the phones. They added that the emergency zone had also expanded to where the journalists were at that moment, which was false: the journalists’ car was outside the emergency zone, before the checkpoint at Czeremcha. The implication was that they could be detained for up to 48 hours and face criminal proceedings initiated for illegally crossing into the zone.

“They lied to us and treated us as criminals, despite us clearly identifying ourselves as journalists,” Jaap Arriens said.

“They intimidated us in order to get the IMEI numbers. We felt that if we refused, we could be detained for up to 48 hours. This kind of behaviour means your rights are thrown right outside the window,” he added.

BIRN has heard of cases of other journalists being intimidated using similar techniques. We will return to the topic in the future.

Polish State of Emergency at Belarus Border Alarms Journalists

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

At the request of the government, Polish President Andrzej Duda on Thursday declared a state of emergency on the Belarus border for 30 days which limits the access of unauthorised people to a three-kilometre-wide stretch of land along the border in two eastern counties.

The unprecedented decision in Poland’s post-communist history, “was taken in connection to a particular threat to the security of citizens and public order, related to the current situation on the state border of Poland with Belarus,” the official statement from the President’s office says.

Since early August, over 3,000 attempts to cross the border with Poland were made by migrants, mostly from the Middle East and Afghanistan, according to Polish border guards.

Most experts and governments say the autocratic leader of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, is deliberately fomenting a crisis in retaliation to the EU imposing sanctions on his regime for the rigged presidential election in 2020 and subsequent violent crackdown on critics and demonstrators.

The state of emergency means “a ban on staying in designated places, facilities and areas at specific times” and includes a ban on gatherings.

The provisions also might mean activists that have been present in the border areas offering food and first aid to migrants and documenting pushbacks by the Polish authorities could be denied access.

Two further provisions may limit the right of journalists to investigate the situation at the border. The decree includes “a prohibition of recording by technical means the appearance or other features of specific places, objects or areas”.

It further envisages “limiting access to public information on activities carried out in the area covered by the state of emergency”.

All the BIRN’s coverage of the border situation, for example, has been done from locations within three kilometres of the border with Belarus.

According to the Polish Prime Minister, around 700 migrants have now been apprehended and taken to refugee centres while others “have been prevented” from entering Poland.

Human rights lawyers and opposition parliamentarians, among others, say Poland has been conducting pushbacks throughout August, a claim supported by numerous migrant statements, including those interviewed by BIRN.

NGOs and lawyers on the ground had started documenting individual cases of pushbacks, which are illegal under international law.

The decree, which is already in force, can still be challenged by the Polish parliament.

Poland Further Restricts Media Freedom, Angers US with Controversial Media Law

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

After a stormy day in the Polish parliament, Law and Justice (PiS) finally managed to scrape enough support late on Wednesday evening to pass a law that will prevent companies outside the European Economic Area from owning television stations in Poland.

The law is seen as a move to further restrict media pluralism in the country and directly targeted at TVN, the largest private television station in the country, owned by the US-based Discovery Inc., whose news coverage has been critical of the governing party. It is also a direct snub to the Biden administration, which responded to the passing of the law with a harsh statement arguing it would harm Poland’s media environment, its investment climate and even relations with its western allies.

On Tuesday, the PiS leadership decided to fire from the government Jaroslaw Gowin, the deputy prime minister and leader of Agreement, one of two junior coalition partners of PiS. Gowin had been a thorn in the side of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski for some time, blocking presidential elections from happening by post back in 2020 and, more recently, opposing the TVN law and the government’s new signature program, the Polish Deal, designed to help Polish working families and win back waning support for the nationalist-populist government.

Without Gowin’s 13 MPs or even some of them, PiS has lost its thin parliamentary majority, which stood at 235 out of 460 seats.

Nevertheless, the party leadership decided to push ahead with the controversial law on Wednesday. Demonstrations in solidarity with TVN were organised in Warsaw and tens of other Polish towns.

Shenanigans

In a surprise development on Wednesday afternoon, the opposition managed to pass a motion introduced by the chairman of the Polish People’s Party, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, which asked for the TVN law vote to be postponed to September. Five parliamentarians from Gowin’s faction and four from the group of maverick politician Pawel Kukiz backed the opposition on this.

There were cheers from the opposition ranks in the parliament upon the announcement of the vote, as this would have been the first major occasion when PiS was defeated in the lower house on a key bill.

But the day was far from over. In what is no longer an unusual practice for PiS, the party’s lawmakers first called for a break, and then invoked anonymous legal experts to claim the vote had been improper in order to force a repeat of the failed vote. By the evening when the poll was repeated, three MPs from the Kukiz’15 group, including its leader Pawel Kukiz, had switched sides to PiS. Kukiz himself pressed the button while opposition MPs shouted “traitor” at him across the hall.

The opposition-controlled Senate is now expected to reject the TVN bill, which the Sejm can later overrule with an absolute majority. In light of this week’s developments, it seems unclear whether PiS can pull that off in the Sejm.

The US, which is a key military and economic partner for Poland, had been putting pressure on Warsaw to leave TVN alone. In a statement following the vote, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken decried the legislation, saying: “Poland is an important NATO ally that understands the Transatlantic Alliance is based on mutual commitments to shared democratic values and prosperity. These pieces of legislation run counter to the principle and values for which modern, democratic nations stand.”

Polish Govt Prepares Attack on Major Independent TV Station

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

A draft law published at 9pm on Wednesday would make it impossible for the Polish national broadcasting council, KRRiT, to renew the licence of TVN24, the most important private news channel in the country. Its licence expires in August. It would also impact the future of TVN as a whole.

According to the proposed text, the governing PiS party plans to modify the law on radio and television to prevent media companies whose owners are based outside the European Economic Area – the European Union plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway – from getting licences.

The formal owner of TVN, which includes TVN24, the all-news channel, is Polish Television Holding BV, registered in the Netherlands, which in its turn is owned by the US media company Discovery, Inc.

The government claims the modifications are necessary to fight “hybrid activities by third states,” but most independent observers see them as a direct attack on TVN, whose news channels have published investigations on and critical coverage of the PiS government.

In a statement on Tuesday, the TVN management said its ownership structure was “compatible with the law on radio and television, which is confirmed by independent expert analyses conducted by well-known legal experts”.

Since PiS took over the state television TVP, including its all-news channel TVP Info, it has turned into a propaganda machine for the governing party.

According to research by Havas Media Group, TVN24 had higher ratings than TVP Info during 2020.

After taking over state media and depriving independent media of state advertising during its first mandate, PiS is focusing now on weakening critically inclined private media.

In December last year, the state energy company PKN Orlen, run by a PiS ally, announced it was taking over Polska Press, the owner of much of Poland’s regional and local media. Purges in newsrooms owned by Orlen have followed.

In February, IPI, a Vienna-based NGO that monitors media freedom, published a report that detailed how PiS was step by step destroying independent media in Poland.

“This policy of death by a thousand cuts means that on their own, these measures have been scattered enough to avoid further battles with Brussels over the rule of law,” Jamie Wiseman, an advocacy officer at IPI, told BIRN at the time.

“Taken together, they amount to a concerted campaign of administrative pressure aimed at destabilising critical media businesses and a direct attack on press freedom,” he said.

The draft law stands a good chance of being passed by the parliament, even if one party in the governing coalition, Agreement, led by Jaroslaw Gowin, might not support it. PiS might count on the extra votes from the far-right Confederation and from the maverick Kukiz’15 group.

Poland to Open Investigation into Belarus Hijacking of Ryanair Flight

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Polish Prosecutor General and Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro on Monday ordered an investigation into the forced landing of a Polish-registered airplane by the Belarusian authorities and the subsequent removal of an opposition activist who enjoyed protected status in Poland.

Poland is on the frontline of the EU’s diplomatic war with Belarus and its authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, who together with scores of Belarusian officials are under EU sanctions, including travel bans and assets freezes, imposed following the disputed August 2020 election and subsequent crackdown on protestors.

Poland has been vocal in its support of the Belarusian opposition, offering protection to exiles and providing Lukashenko critics with a house in Warsaw to use as their headquarters. The Lukashenko regime has retaliated by targeting members of the Polish minority in Belarus: in the last few months, several Poles in Belarus have been arrested, including Andrzej Poczobut, a journalist and member of the Association of Poles in Belarus.

The Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius was crossing Belarusian airspace when the authorities there, reportedly on Lukashenko’s orders, used a false bomb alert and a fighter jet to force the flight carrying Roman Protasevich to land in Minsk, where security services boarded the plane and arrested the opposition activist.

The incident, which has caused outrage across Europe and was described by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki as “an unprecedented act of state terrorism”, prompted prosecutors in Poland to open an investigation linked to two articles in the Polish criminal code.

One concerns the use of deception or threat of direct violence to take control of an aircraft, which in this case was officially registered in Poland, giving a legal basis for the investigation as the plane is considered Polish territory. The other concerns the unlawful deprivation of freedom of Protasevich, who last year was given protected status in Poland, allowing him to move freely inside the EU, as well as the other passengers.

The 26-year-old journalist is one of the founders of Telegram channel NEXTA, which played a prominent role in the organisation of protests against Lukashenko throughout the second half of last year. At least part of NEXTA’s content had been uploaded from Poland, which hosts a sizeable community of Belarusian exiles, including the channel’s founders and other opposition leaders. Protasevich was no longer living in Poland.

“I have asked the European Council President to expand tomorrow’s European Council agenda and discuss immediate sanctions against A. Lukashenka regime,” Prime Minister Morawiecki tweeted on Sunday night. “Hijacking of a civilian plane is an unprecedented act of state terrorism. It cannot go unpunished.”

Protasevich faces charges in Belarus of inciting public disorder and social hatred, carrying a jail sentence of up to 12 years if convicted. He is also on a list of terrorists compiled by Belarusian authorities and, if officially charged with terrorism, could face the death penalty. The terrified young man reportedly pleaded with the airline crew not to land the plane, saying he would face the death penalty if it did. Belarusian security operatives were reportedly on the plane, which was eventually allowed to fly to its destination in Lithuania after several hours.

The Czechs have joined its neighbour Poland in protesting the actions of the Belarusian regime, though there has been no official reaction yet from Hungary, Slovakia or a joint Visegrad Four statement. However, Katalin Cseh, a Hungarian MEP from the opposition Renew group wrote in a Facebook post: “The detention of the Belarusian activist is unacceptable – Europe must act!… The Hungarian government and Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó must stop their harmful practice of vetoing joint EU action. Instead of supporting dictatorships, the Hungarian government must finally stand up for the protection of our democratic values.”

PiS-Friendly High Courts in Poland Conspire to Restrict Access to Public Info

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The chief justice of Poland’s Supreme Court, a presidential appointee, has asked the government-controlled Constitutional Tribunal to declare key elements of the law on access to public information as unconstitutional, which experts warn could bring about an end to government transparency.

Since being elected in 2015, the nationalist-populist Law and Justice (PiS) government has suffered a series of scandals – some uncovered through the use of transparency laws – concerning the appointments of relatives and friends of PiS politicians to public office, as well as the favouring of friendly foundations, media and other institutions in the distribution of public funds.

Observers speculate that another intended effect of the request could be to shield from media scrutiny certain state companies, which PiS is increasingly using to achieve political ends, such as taking control of critical media.

It emerged Wednesday, via a personal tweet from Miroslaw Wroblewski, a lawyer and director of the constitutional law team at the office of the Polish Ombudsman, that Malgorzata Manowska, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, had formally requested on February 16 that the Constitutional Tribunal assess the constitutionality of several aspects of Poland’s law governing access to public information.

Manowska, who was appointed to her position last year by the PiS-allied President Andrzej Duda, claimed in her submission that the law doesn’t specify enough the scope of concepts such as “public authorities”, “other entities performing public tasks”, “persons exercising public functions” and “the relation to the exercise of public functions”. As a consequence, she wrote, the concepts are stretched too broadly in an illegal manner, meaning too many public bodies and officials are held accountable.

The chief justice also challenged the obligation of state bodies to provide information about public officials, “including their personal data and information belonging to their private sphere”, which she argued is both unconstitutional and contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights. Yet this could also refer, potentially, to information about supplementary sources of income or conflicts of interest that exist among the official’s family.

Wroblewski took to social media to comment on Manowska’s request: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ll remember this date [February 16] as the end of government transparency”.

Krzysztof Izdebski, from the open-government watchdog Fundacja ePanstwo, anticipates that public institutions which have been taken to court by journalists for not providing requested public information on time will now start filing requests to suspend their trials until the Constitutional Tribunal rules. “This request is also meant to have a chilling effect on citizens and journalists,” Izdebski commented.

Manowska was nominated to the Supreme Court by the National Council of the Judiciary, KRS, a body whose independence from the ruling party has been questioned by both the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Polish Supreme Court itself. Although an experienced judge and former dean of the National School of Judiciary and Public Prosecution, she has also served as a deputy justice minister under Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, raising concerns about her independence from him and PiS.

In turn, the Constitutional Tribunal was the first body in the justice system that PiS sought to establish political control over when it took power, while its President, Julia Przylebska, is known to be a personal friend of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Fakebooks in Hungary and Poland

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Poland and Hungary have seen the launch recently of locally developed versions of Facebook, as criticism of the US social media giants grows amid allegations of censorship and the silencing of conservative voices.

The creators behind Hundub in Hungary and Albicla in Poland both cite the dominance of the US social media companies and concern over their impact on free speech as reasons for their launch – a topic which has gained prominence since Facebook, Twitter and Instagram banned Donald Trump for his role in mobilising crowds that stormed the Capitol in Washington DC on January 6. It is notable that both of the new platforms hail from countries with nationalist-populist governments, whose supporters often rail against the power of the major social media platforms and their managers’ alleged anti-conservative bias.

Albicla’s connection to the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is explicit. Right-wing activists affiliated with the PiS-friendly weekly Gazeta Polska are behind Albicla, whose name is as obscure to Poles as it is to the international reader, although Ryszard Kapuscinski from the Gazeta Polska team claims it is an amalgamation of the Latin phrase albus aquila, meaning “white eagle”, a Polish national symbol.

The activists say Albicla is a response to the “censorship” of conservative voices by the global internet giants. “We have disturbed the powerful interests and breached the walls of the ideological front that is pushing conservative thinking to the sidelines,” Tomasz Sakiewicz, editor-in-chief of Gazeta Polska, wrote on Thursday, the day after the new portal was launched.

“Not all the functionalities are ready because we wanted to launch the portal in the last hour of the rule of the leader of the free world,” Sakiewicz continued, referring to Trump’s last day in office on January 20. “It is now up to us to ensure this world continues to be free, particularly online.”

Busy bees

The origins of Hundub – forged from the words “Hungarian” and “dub”, which also means “beehive” in ancient Hungarian – are less clear. Until recently, Hundub was owned by Murmurati Ltd, an offshore company registered in Belize, but it pulled out last week and Hundub’s founder, Csaba Pal, announced it would be crowdfunded from now on.

The December 6 launch of Hundub received little attention until the government-loyal Magyar Nemzet began acclaiming it as a truly Hungarian and censorship-free alternative to Facebook, which, the paper argues, treats Hungarian government politicians unfairly. Prime Minister Viktor Orban was one of the first politicians to sign up to Hundub, but all political parties have rushed to register, starting with the liberal-centrist Momentum, the party most favoured by young people.

Pal – a previously unknown entrepreneur from the eastern Hungarian city of Debrecen – said his goal was to launch a social media platform that supports free speech, from both the left and right, and is free from political censorship. “The social media giants have grown too big and there must be an alternative to them,” Pal told Magyar Nemzet, accusing the US tech company of deleting the accounts of thousands of Hungarians without reason.

While it’s unclear whether there is any government involvement in Hundub, its launch is proving handy for the prime minister’s ruling Fidesz party in its fight against the US tech giants. Judit Varga, the combative justice minister, regularly lashes out at Facebook and Twitter, accusing them of limiting right-wing, conservative and Christian views. Only last week, she consulted with the president of the Competition Authority and convened an extraordinary meeting of the Digital Freedom Committee to discuss possible responses to the “recent abuses by the tech giants”.


Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (L) and the chief editor of Gazeta Polska Tomasz Sakiewicz (R). Photo: EPA/EFE LAJOS SOOS

Future of Farcebooks

Unfortunately for the Polish and Hungarian governments and their supporters, rarely have such technology ventures succeeded.

Eline Chivot, a former senior policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation, said government-backed ideas such as the recent “French Airbnb” are destined to fail from a lack of credibility, because they are based “on politically biased motives and a misguided application of industrial policy, [and] seek to dominate a market that is no longer up for grabs”.

Indeed, Albicla became the butt of jokes immediately upon its launch as users pointed out the numerous security and functionality flaws. Among them, some of the regulations of the new website were apparently copy-pasted from Facebook, as they included hyperlinks to Mark Zuckerberg’s site; more concerning, it was possible to download the entire database of users the day after launch.

Trolls immediately took advantage of the site’s shortcomings to ridicule it, with countless fake accounts set up for Pope John Paul II, Trump and PiS politicians. Despite it being set up as an “anti-censorship” space, many users have complained of being blocked for unclear reasons in the few days since launch.

“Albicla is an ad hoc initiative by the Polish supporters of Trumpism in direct reaction to the banning of Trump from social media platforms: it’s equivalent to right-wing radicals in the US moving to Parler and other such platforms,” Rafal Pankowski, head of the Warsaw-based “Never Again” anti-fascist organisation, told BIRN.

Pankowski points out there have been similar initiatives before, including stabs at creating a “Polish Facebook”, that were unsuccessful, though there exists a local alternative to YouTube, wRealu24, which the expert describes as “virulently anti-Semitic and homophobic” and whose popularity cannot be ignored.

Likewise, Hundub has been roundly mocked. Critics point out it is just a simplified version of Facebook that looks rather embarrassing in technological and layout terms. It has the same features as Facebook – you can meet friends, share content, upload photos and videos, and, as an extra feature, there is also a blog-format where you can publish your own stories uncensored. Even the buttons are similar to those Facebook uses.

Hvg.hu recalls that Hungarians actually had their own highly successful pre-Facebook called iWiW (an abbreviation of “International Who Is Who”), which was launched in 2002 and became the most popular website in Hungary between 2005 and 2010 with over 4.5 million registered users. Alas, competition from Facebook forced it to close in 2014.

It is unlikely that Hundub will be able to challenge Facebook’s dominance, but media expert Agnes Urban from Mérték Research said in an interview that Hundub could be used by Orban’s Fidesz party to rally supporters before the 2022 election and create an enthusiastic community of voters.

Founder Csaba Pal also explained that his aim is to create a social media platform for all Hungarians, meaning ‘Greater Hungary’ with its ethnic brethren in parts of Serbia, Romania, Ukraine and Slovakia.

Hungarian politicians, from left and right, are very active on Facebook and, to a lesser extent, on Twitter. Prime Minister Orban, initially wary of digital technology, now leads with over 1.1 million followers on Facebook and has even chosen to announce a number of policy measures during the pandemic on his page.

Justice Minister Varga and Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, notwithstanding their frequent outbursts, are both avid users of Facebook. It is not known whether any of their Facebook activity has been censored or banned; the business news site Portfolio recalls that the only political party to have been banned is the far-right Mi Hazánk party, whose leader, Laszlo Torockai, also had his account deleted. No doubt they will able to start afresh on Hundub.

Albicla also stands to benefit from its close connections to the Polish government, which since coming to power in 2015 has bolstered the pro-government media via mass advertising by state-controlled companies.

According to research conducted by Kantar this summer, the 16 state companies and institutions analysed by the consulting firm increased their advertising budgets to Gazeta Polska by 79 per cent between 2019 and 2020 – a period during which most media have lost advertising due to the pandemic. Gazeta Poska Codziennie, a daily affiliated with the same trust, has seen similar gains. And the foundation of Gazeta Polska editor-in-chief Tomasz Sakiewicz has also benefitted from state funds to the tune of millions of zloty.

By contrast, since PiS came to power, the media critical of the government, such as Gazeta Wyborcza, have seen their revenues from state advertising slashed.

In 2019, Gazeta Polska made international headlines when it distributed “LGBT-free zone” stickers with the magazine, in a period when PiS counsellors across Poland were starting to push for the passing of resolutions declaring towns “zones free of LGBT ideology”.

Despite the hiccups at launch, Albicla was immediately endorsed by high-level members of the government, including Piotr Glinski, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, and Sebastian Kaleta, a secretary of state at the Ministry of Justice.

Kaleta is also the man in charge of a new draft law on the protection of freedom of speech online, announced in December by the Justice Ministry, which would prevent social media companies from being able to remove posts or block accounts unless the content is in breach of Polish law.

The International Network Against Cyber Hate (INACH), an Amsterdam-based foundation set up to combat discrimination online, has argued that “over-zealous” policing of harmful speech is not an issue in Poland and that the new Polish law might mean, for example, that online attacks against the LGBT community – which are not covered by national hate speech legislation – might go unpunished.

And where might those online attacks against the LGBT community be disseminated? Albicla, perhaps.

EU Set to Take on Big Tech with New Digital Services Act

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Over the past two decades, the process of digitisation has completely transformed the European services sector, though EU legislation regulating the provision of those services has not kept up with the fast-changing technological environment. With consensus among European policymakers that the 20-year-old piece of legislation, the e-Commerce Directive, was in dire need of updating, the European Commission announced in January 2020 that it would pass a new Digital Services Act by the end of 2020. That date, expected to be December 2, is rapidly approaching.

With this brand new set of regulations governing the EU’s digital market, the Commission intends to clarify and introduce new digital services liability rules and ensure a more competitive digital market where even small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) can compete with the more established players.

Policymakers in the EU, which is already home to the world’s strictest data privacy laws, believe that Europe is in a unique position to set new standards for the regulation of digital services for the whole world. The forthcoming rules represent an unprecedented strike against the seemingly limitless power of big tech, which are likely to oppose the reforms.

A close-up image shows the slogan of the ‘StopHateForProfit’ campaign on the organization’s website displayed on a smartphone screen in Cologne, Germany, 29 June 2020. EPA-EFE/SASCHA STEINBACH

What new rules are coming?  

Although the final contours of the legislative package are not yet public knowledge, it is expected that the regulation will come in two legislative proposals. The first set of proposals contained in the Digital Services Act will likely focus on updating digital services providers’ responsibilities and liabilities. The Digital Markets Act will then likely be concerned with limiting the power of big platforms in general.

In a recent speech, Executive Vice-President of the Commission Margrethe Vestager said that digital media platforms need to be more transparent about the way they share the digital world that we see.

“They’ll have to report on what they’ve done to take down illegal material. They’ll have to tell us how they decide what information and products to recommend to us, and which ones to hide – and give us the ability to influence those decisions, instead of simply having them made for us. And they’ll have to tell us who’s paying for the ads that we see, and why we’ve been targeted by a certain ad,” Vestager said earlier this year.

Although it is not year clear which specific platforms will be targeted, it is widely expected that the new rules with mainly apply to social media platforms with more than 2 million users, which have, until now, bitterly resisted attempts to disclose their algorithms.

“Platforms need to ensure that their users can be protected from illegal goods and content online, by putting in place the right processes to react swiftly to illegal activities, and to cooperate with law enforcement authorities more effectively,” the Commission’s press officer for the digital economy, Charles Manoury, told BIRN an email.

When asked about the concrete rules being considered in Brussels, Manoury said that the Commission will “aim to harmonise a clear set of obligations (responsibilities) for online platforms, including notice-and-action procedures, redress, transparency and accountability measures, and cooperation obligations.”

In a report produced by the European Parliamentary Research Service in October, EU experts came up with the following recommendations for the Commission:

  1. Introduce a clear, standardised notice-and-action procedures to deal with illegal and harmful content;
  2. Enhanced transparency on content curation and reporting obligations for platforms;
  3. Out-of-court dispute settlement on content management, particularly on notice-and-action procedures.

Those policy recommendations are strikingly similar to the rules already in effect in the country currently holding the Presidency of the Council of the EU – Germany.

A Google logo is displayed at the Google offices in Berlin, Germany, 24 June 2019. EPA-EFE/HAYOUNG JEON

German lessons

 “The Commission in its impact assessments takes into account already existing EU laws, such as the NetzDG,” noted the Commission’s spokesman Manoury, referring to the Network Enforcement Act, which was passed by the German parliament back in 2017.

According to the website of the German Ministry of Justice and and Consumer Protection, the law aims to fight hate crime and criminally punish fake news and other unlawful content on social networks more effectively. This includes insults, malicious gossip, defamation, public incitement to crime, incitement to hatred, disseminating portrayals of violence and threatening the commission of a felony.

In practice, all social media platforms (with more than 2 million users) that are accessible in Germany are obliged to take down or block access to “manifestly unlawful content” within 24 hours of receiving a complaint. They also have to offer their users an accessible procedure for reporting criminally punishable content and take “immediate notice” of any content that might violate German criminal law.

But German lawmakers didn’t stop there. In June this year, the Budestag decided to tighten further the laws against hate speech online by requiring social networks to report to the BKA (Federal Police) and transmit some user data, such as IP addresses or port numbers, directly to the authorities.

Moreover, new rules will oblige operators of social networks to submit biannual reports on their handling of complaints about criminally punishable content. These reports must contain information, for example, on the volume of complaints and the decision-making practices of the network, as well as about the teams responsible for processing reported content. They must be made available to everybody on the internet.

Social media platforms could be liable for fines of up to 50 million euros if they fail on their reporting duties, according to a statement from the Justice Ministry.

According to the German daily Stuttgarter Zeitung, so far nine social media platforms have offered transparency reports: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Tiktok, Soundcloud, Change.org and Google+. The number of complaints varies greatly. In the second half of 2019, 4,274 unsatisfied users reported to Facebook. There were 843,527 complaints on Twitter and 277,478 on YouTube. Facebook felt compelled to take action in almost a quarter of the cases. 87 per cent of these posts were deleted within 24 hours, a total of 488. Twitter took care of 16 per cent of the complaints, 86 per cent of which were removed from the network within a day, according to the German newspaper.

However, the new obligations have their critics. Some express concern that legal content will end up being deleted by overzealous platforms eager to avoid paying hefty fines, the so-called problem of “over-blocking”. In 2017, when the law was first passed by the German parliament, even journalism unions in Germany protested against it, fearing a new form of censorship.

Reacting to the criticisms, German Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht recently called for the introduction of a “counter-presentation procedure”, which would give authors of deleted content the right to ask social networks for a reassessment of their decision before any fines would be imposed.

There is also criticism that some of the proposed rules might even be in conflict with the German constitution. This particularly concerns the law intended to combat far-right extremism and hate crime, which was passed in the summer and is intended to force operators of social networks to report criminal content such as the threat of dangerous bodily harm or defamation of public figures (mayors or municipal councillors) to the Federal Criminal Police Office. It is because of those concerns that the president has not yet signed the law.

Long way to go

The German experience clearly shows that certain measures to combat the spread of hate speech and other form of illegal content online are relatively easy to implement, while others, like direct reporting to the police, might take much longer to build a consensus around.

That being said, even when it comes to the seemingly more trivial measures, the European Commission’s mission is an infinitely more challenging one. First of all, it needs to make all member states agree on what even constitutes a hate crime on the internet. Then it has to create a set of rules that would be applicable across all member states.

According to a source in the European Commission familiar with the legislation, the first task is the easier one. “There is actually a very broad agreement across the EU on the question of illegal content. Basically, what is illegal offline is also illegal online – it is just a question of how you monitor it and what measures to take to make sure that the rules are followed also online,” the source, who wished to remain anonymous, told BIRN.

Whatever the rules that the Commission ends up proposing in early December, the speed of the final implementation of those measures will largely depend on the legal form of the rules.

Generally speaking, if the rules assume the form of EU regulations, the final implementation might take a very long time, as regulations need unilateral agreement by all member states. If EU legislators decide to go with directives, which leave a lot of space for individual member states to translate into their own respective national laws and don’t require unilateral agreement, things could go much faster.

According to the source from the Commission, half a year is an absolute minimum to expect the legislative process to take.

“If you have an extremely well-drafted piece of legislation that everyone agrees on, it can take half a year. I’ve never heard about anything going faster than this. It is already clear that this will not be very straightforward,” the source said.

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