Serbia Archives - Page 2 of 4

Secure Comms: Cracking the Encrypted Messages of Balkan Crime Gangs

Posted on April 12, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

When Serbian police arrested the leaders of a notorious crime gang in the first few days of February this year, in the search for evidence they seized 44 mobile phones equipped with an encrypted messaging app created by Canada-based Sky ECC.

Sky ECC described itself as “a global leader in secure messaging technology”, helping to keep a host of industries safe from identity theft and hacking. Law enforcement authorities in the United States and Europe, however, say it was created with the sole purpose of facilitating drug trafficking and had become the messaging app of choice for transnational crime organisations.

Using equipment that President Aleksandar Vucic said Serbia had “borrowed from friends”, police managed to access the app. What they found was gruesome, and damning – photos of two dead men, one of them decapitated.

Led by Veljko Belivuk, the gang – part of a group of violent football fans – is suspected of drug trafficking, murder and illegal weapons possession.

Belivuk and his associates, who remain in custody but have not yet been charged, allegedly used the app to organise criminal activities, and to brag about their exploits. In this, they were not alone.

On March 9, three days after Vucic displayed the photos, police in Belgium and the Netherlands made what Europol described the next day as a large number of arrests after secretly infiltrating the communications of some 70,000 Sky ECC devices and, from mid-February, reading them ‘live’.

On March 12, US authorities indicted Jean-Francois Eap, chief executive officer of Sky Global, the company behind Sky ECC, and Thomas Herdman, a former high-level distributor of Sky Global devices, accusing them of conspiracy to violate the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, RICO. Eap issued a statement denying any wrongdoing.

Critics of the government under Vucic say Belivuk had long acted with impunity, protected by reported ties to a number of senior governing officials.

Serbia boasted of a “war” on organised crime. But the timing of Belivuk’s arrest and the operation against Sky ECC raises fresh questions about what preceded the Serbian police swoop – whether Serbia acted alone, or was prompted to do so by evidence unearthed elsewhere.

Either way, the downfall of Belivuk and Sky ECC has shed new light on the lengths Balkan crime gangs have gone to evade surveillance, and the challenge facing authorities to strike back. It has also fuelled talk of the need to criminalise such software, raising alarm among some who say this would punish legitimate users, from political dissidents to investigative journalists.

The Serbian Interior Ministry and Security Intelligence Agency, BIA, did not respond to requests for comment.

“Organised crime groups from the Balkans have adapted quickly and cleverly in recent years to innovate and use technology to their advantage,” said Walter Kemp, director of the South-Eastern Europe Observatory at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.

While some still carry cash across borders or use wire transfers, others are using encrypted communication tools, laundering money through cryptocurrencies and elaborate financial schemes and branching into cyber and cyber-enabled crime, Kemp told BIRN.

“But while criminals are first-movers and quick adapters in using technology, law enforcement agencies are lagging behind.”

This message will self-destruct

Screenshot: skyecc.com

Founded in 2008, Sky ECC surged in popularity after messages sent via another encrypted messaging service, EncroChat, were intercepted and decoded in a French and Dutch-led operation in mid-2020, leading to the arrest of over 800 people Europe-wide and the seizure of drugs, guns and large sums of suspect cash.

Sky devices offered self-destructing messages, an encrypted vault and a panic button in the event the user believed the device had been compromised. Sky ECC was installed exclusively on secure devices from Apple, Google and Blackberry, which could be bought online. All that was required of a user was to pay a subscription.

At the time of the police operation, three million messages per day were being sent via Sky ECC. Roughly 20 per cent of its 170,000 users were in Belgium and the Netherlands, with the greatest concentration in the Belgian port of Antwerp, a popular destination for illegal drugs arriving in Europe from South America.

Europol, the European Union’s police agency, said that information acquired from “unlocking the encryption” of Sky ECC would help solve serious and cross-border organised crime “for the coming months, possibly years.”

For Balkan clients, there were three websites promoting the app in languages of the region – skyecceurope.com, skyeccbalkan.com, skyeccserbia.com.

It is unclear if these operated under the umbrella of Sky Global or were independent distributors. BIRN contacted them but did not receive any reply. The website of Sky Global is also now in the hands of authorities. BIRN was unable to reach the company for comment.

Serbian nationals arrested in France and UK

Sky and EncroChat devices were, until recently, easy to find on Serbian and Croatian advertising sites, their price ranging from 600 euros to 2,200 euros depending on the type of phone and subscription. Subscriptions were commonly paid with cryptocurrency, to avoid leaving a trace.

A police official in Bosnia and Herzegovina said they were also in use among criminals there.

“They use those special apps and providers you can’t interfere with, and there’s no trace of their existence in the phone. The use is legal here,” the official, who declined to be named, told BIRN.

While police were unable to intercept the communication, he said, in some cases an arrested person would confess to using such apps and provide access.

A senior Interpol official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Balkan drug gangs were using EncroChat to communicate with South American cartels concerning the trafficking of drugs to Europe.

French authorities had been investigating EncroChat since 2017, stepping up efforts in 2019 and secretly installing an implant on all EncroChat devices disguised as a system update. The implant caused the device to transmit all data that had not been erased to a French police server and to Europol and collected data created after the device had been compromised.

The company eventually alerted users but millions of messages had already been intercepted.

Dutch and French police as well as Europol declined to give any further details regarding possible connections to Balkan crime gangs, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation.

A French newspaper report on March 27, however, said that a Serbian national had been arrested in a suburb of Paris following the Sky ECC operation on suspicion of selling its devices. In the UK, reports say another Serbian, 29-year-old Milos Bigovic, pleaded guilty in a UK court in August 2020 after he was arrested trying to smuggle cocaine hydrochloride into southern England on a cruise ship, his communications having been intercepted in the operation against EncroChat.

In Serbia, some criminals went further; in 2019, when police busted a major marijuana farm that had been run with the help of several security service officials, investigators found that those involved had communicated via a custom-made app called ‘Razgovor’ [Conversation].

Those arrested handed over their phones, apparently confident that police would not discover the app hidden behind the calculator interface. They were wrong and police, according to the indictment, gained access to conversations in which the suspects agreed on the production and distribution of drugs.

Admissible in court

Members of Veljko Belivuk’s group are being transferred for interrogation with a strong police presence. Photo:mup.gov.rs

It remains unclear whether foreign authorities supplied Serbia with evidence against Belivuk and Co obtained as part of the operation against Sky ECC, or if Serbia only harvested content from the devices it seized in the arrests.

Bearing in mind that most of the content sent via Sky devices disappeared soon after being sent, it is doubtful police in Serbia were able to recover much from the seized devices.

Authorities in Serbia did not respond to BIRN’s questions.

In the case of intercepted communication, for it to be used as evidence in court the police must have had prior court permission to conduct surveillance. It is not known whether Belivuk and his gang were under court-sanctioned surveillance. BIRN asked the court but was told such information cannot be disclosed.

The issue came before a UK court in February, when appeals judges rejected an attempt to prevent prosecutors from using as evidence messages sent via EncroChat.

The case rested on whether communications had been intercepted by French police while ‘being transmitted’ by the device or while ‘stored’ on it. As the material had been extracted from the device itself and was unencrypted, the Appeal Court found that the evidence had not been gained by ‘interception’ and was admissible, the BBC reported.

Criminalising encryption

Sky Global has denied any wrongdoing, with CEO Eap saying “We stand for the protection of privacy and freedom of speech in an era when these rights are under increasing attack. We do not condone illegal or unethical behaviour by our partners or customers. To brand anyone who values privacy and freedom of speech as a criminal is an outrage.”

But Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin said the use of such devices should be illegal.

“It is indisputable that it is used by criminals,” Vulin said on March 7. “I am in favour of it being a crime, as I believe that the purchase of any telephone number, regardless of whether it is prepaid or postpaid, must be done with an ID card.”

“It may not stop criminals from using it, but if nothing else it will give the police another reason to arrest them and remove them from the streets.”

Some journalists and rights advocates say this is a slippery slope.

“Encryption is a tool. And like any tool, it can be used for good and for bad,” said Fabian Scherschel, a freelance journalist, writer and podcaster who has covered the topic closely.

“We’ve already seen legislation against so-called ‘hacker tools’ massively backfire and threaten to criminalise the legitimate work of IT security specialists and journalists. I have a feeling this legislation could cause similar problems. It will also, most likely, make it easier to spy on the general populace, who has no intention of using encryption to hide criminal behaviour whatsoever.”

Diego Naranjo, head of policy at the Brussels-based advocacy group European Digital Rights, EDRi, said it was important to challenge the narrative that encryption is only used by criminals.

“As any other interference with human rights, an attack on encryption or privacy-enhancing technologies needs to be prescribed by law, necessary and proportionate to the aims to be achieved in a democratic society,” said Naranjo.

He noted that the EncroChat and Sky ECC cases had demonstrated that law enforcement agencies have ways to penetrate such communication.

“We may be already in the Crypto wars 3.0, and it is up to us to ensure that encryption is perceived as a tool to ensure human rights and not something only criminals use.”

Lidija Komlen Nikolic, Serbian Deputy Appellate Public Prosecutor, warned of the dangers of criminalising the use of such apps.

“The idea is to enable state authorities, the police, to be able to find evidence more easily for the fight against organised crime or any other type of crime,” Nikolic told N1 regional broadcaster.

“But there should not be the presumption that all of us, who have devices or have software that uses some kind of encryption, are potential perpetrators of a crime.”

Abuse of Journalists Rarely Punished by Serbian Courts: Report

Posted on February 23, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A report analysing court cases for crimes against journalists, published on Tuesday by the Belgrade-based Slavko Curuvija Foundation and Centre for Judicial Research, says that on average, only one in ten criminal complaints about threats to or attacks on journalists results in a court verdict.

The report, entitled ‘Protection of Freedom of Speech in the Judicial System of Serbia’, analysed 20 court cases dating from 2017 and 2020 that involved the alleged crimes of endangering someone’s security, general endangerment, persecution, violent behaviour and inciting ethnic, racial and religious hatred and intolerance.

“Most reports of acts against journalists don’t go any further than the prosecutor’s office. Only every tenth reported case ends with a final court decision,” the report says.

The report claims that when deciding not to press charges, “it seems that the prosecution did not consider the specifics of these cases carefully and attentively enough”.

It also says that in cases where there have been convictions, courts imposed suspended sentences in eight of them and a year of home detention in one case, while the only custodial sentence imposed was six months in jail.

The report also analyses 305 misdemeanour cases from 2017 and 2019 in which journalists, editors, publishers and media outlets were sued.

It says that most cases drag on for too long, meaning that a final judgment is often made too long after the initial incident for it to provide adequate legal satisfaction for the defendants or plaintiffs in terms of protecting their rights.

“In by far the largest number of cases, the process lasts longer than a year,” the report says.

It partly blames delays in sending out copies of verdicts, which in turn delays appeals.

The report also says that some media publish articles without properly checking the facts and the source of the information.

“Compensation is often awarded for using the image of the wrong person to illustrate an article,” it says.

OSCE Chides Kosovo for Preventing Entry of Serbian Journalists

Posted on February 19, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The OSCE Mission in Kosovo has said it is “concerned” about the recent denial of entry to the country by journalistic crews from Serbia at the Jarinje crossing point.

“Such actions not only contribute to the difficulties that journalists face in conducting their work, but also send a negative message about press freedom and the tolerance for a pluralistic media landscape,” OSCE Kosovo wrote on its Facebook account.

A crew for the Radio Television Serbia TV Show Right to Tomorrow was banned from entering Kosovo on Thursday. The show’s editor, Svetlana Vukumirovic, told RTS they were banned from entering because they did not announce their arrival 72 hours earlier.

“No one ever asked the show’s crew or other journalists to announce themselves in such a way before,” Vukumirovic told RTS.

Earlier, an RTS journalistic team tried to enter Kosovo on February 15, but were also denied permission. Four days later, they were officially banned from entry. The Journalists’ Association of Serbia, UNS, in a press release condemned an “attack on press freedom”.

The Association of Journalists of Kosovo and Metohija, which represents Kosovo Serb media, organised a protest on the border line on Wednesday. Association president Budimir Nicic said stopping RTS journalists from entering Kosovo was “classic harassment”.

“This is a classic harassment, this is a classic threat to human rights and media freedoms, this is a violation of all civilization values and norms, and must stop,” Nicic said at the protest.

The Serbian government’s liaison officer with Pristina, Dejan Pavicevic, told the UNS that only senior state officials had an obligation to announce their arrival in advance – not journalists.

“This only applies to top government officials … We will now ask Brussels to take concrete steps because this is a flagrant violation of the [2013 Brussels] Agreement [between Belgrade and Pristina], on freedom of movement and the right of journalists to freedom of reporting,” Pavicevic told UNS.

The Independent Journalist Association of Serbia, NUNS, warned “that the journalistic profession does not serve for political undercutting and collecting points, but to report honestly and credibly on events that are of public importance”.

Kosovo and Serbia reached an agreement about officials’ visits in 2014 that included a procedure for announcing visits of officials from one country to the other. However, both countries have continued stopping officials from entering from the other country, often without explanation.

Facebook, Twitter Struggling in Fight against Balkan Content Violations

Posted on February 16, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

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 disputed content, 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

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.”

Serbia Bans Sale of Shirts Celebrating Srebrenica Massacres

Posted on January 15, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Serbia’s Market Inspectorate on Friday banned the Belgrade-based 011 Shop from selling and advertising sweatshirts and T-shirts with a slogan praising the 1995 Srebrenica massacres, which its website had been promoting online.

The Trade Ministry said that a criminal complaint had also been filed to the Serbian prosecution accusing the company of “the advertising of products that incite national, religious and racial hatred”.

The garments featured the slogan “Noz, Zica” (“Knife, Wire”) – a reference to a popular Serbian football hooligan chant at matches, “Knife, Wire, Srebrenica”, which celebrates the mass killings of Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995.

“The advertising and sale of such products not only violates the law on advertising and the criminal code, but is in direct conflict with the constitution of Serbia, because it encourages the incitement of national, religious and racial hatred, which is explicitly prohibited,” said the secretary of state at the Trade Ministry, Uros Kandic.

Kandic said that a criminal complaint against the online retailer had been filed to the Prosecutor’s Office for High-Tech Crime.

Shop 011 apologised for the incident on its Facebook page, claiming that the message on the garments had been “misinterpreted” and “taken out of context”, and that they had been withdrawn from sale.

“It was not our intention to spread any kind of hatred or bigotry towards anyone,” the shop’s statement said.

Its website, registered to the Belgrade-based company Souvenir Shop, went offline on Friday morning.

Shop 011 advertises its garments as “Serbian street wear” for men, women and children. Some items also celebrate the Serbian nationalist Chetnik Movement and its World War II-era leader Dragoljub Mihajlovic, as well as notorious 1990s paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan.

The company also has retail shops at locations in Belgrade.

Bosnian Serb forces killed some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys after seizing the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in July 1995, in a series of massacres that international courts have classified as genocide.

Share Your Experience: Violations on Social Media

Posted on January 8, 2021January 26, 2023 by BIRD

We’re looking for people who are willing to share their experience with us to help in a story we’re currently working on. Scroll down for information on how to part take.

The key things we want to know:

What type of violations have you reported?
In what language was the content?
How was the report processed?

What do we consider to be violations of social media community guidelines:

Violent threats (direct or indirect)
Harassment, which entails inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others
Hateful conduct, which entails promoting violence against or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease.

Things to note:

We are looking for social media users that reported content in the Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Albanian, and Macedonian languages. We want to hear as many different experiences from all around Southeast Europe.

Your stories will be used to help us with an ongoing investigation.

How to take part?

To submit your experience, all you need to do is fill out this form.

You can also contact us via email: readerstories@birn.eu.com.

Or you can reach us on social media…

FB: @balkaninsight

TW: @balkaninsight

We’ll need to receive your application by midnight, January 15, 2021.

Questionary is available in English, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Montenegrin, Macedonian, and Albanian.

Online Media in Balkans ‘Need Regulation, Not Censorship’

Posted on December 22, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Experts told an online debate hosted by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network on Tuesday that the current regulation systems for online media in the Western Balkans are not good enough, but efforts to curb the publication of hate speech and defamatory comments must not tip over into censorship.

Media and legal experts from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia who spoke at the debate entitled ‘Case Law and Online Media Regulation in the Balkans’ also said that the application of existing legislation is inadequate.

Authorities often rely on legislation that was developed for traditional media which has not been adapted accordingly, or on self-regulation which is not mandatory.

Lazar Sandev, an attorney at law from North Macedonia argued that “those who create public opinion regarding matters of public interest do not uphold any standards, they do not have any legal knowledge”.

Jelena Kleut, associate professor at the University of Novi Sad’s Faculty of Philosophy, said that in Serbia there is lack of willingness to apply standards in online media, and noted a difference between rich and poor media outlets as well as responsible and not responsible ones.

“The wealthy, irresponsible media – they have legal knowledge but they don’t care. They would rather see the complaints in court, pay a certain amount of fines and continue along, they don’t care. On the other end of the spectrum, we have responsible but poor media,” Kleut said.

The media experts also debated the controversial issue of reader comment sections on websites, which some sites around the world have removed in recent years because of a proliferation of hate speech, defamation and insulting language.

According to Montenegro’s Media Law, which came in force in August this year, the founder of an online publication is obliged to remove a comment “that is obviously illegal content” without delay, and no later than 60 minutes from learning or receiving a report that a comment is illegal.

Milan Radovic, programme director of the Civil Alliance NGO and a member of the Montenegrin Public Broadcaster’s governing council, argued that this “it is clear that in such a short period of time, if it is applied, will damage those affected, but also damages for freedom of expression”.

Edina Harbinja, a senior lecturer at Britain’s Aston University, warned that there is a conflict between regulatory attempts and media freedom, and that “this is when we need to be careful in how we regulate, not to result in censorship”.

This was the second debate in a series of discussions on online media regulation with various stakeholders, organised as a part of the regional Media for All project, which aim to support independent media outlets in the Western Balkans to become more audience-oriented and financially sustainable.

The project is funded by the UK government and delivered by a consortium led by the British Council in partnership with BIRN, the Thomson Foundation and the International NGO Training and Research Centre, INTRAC.

China’s Huawei Opens Tech Centre, Consolidating Presence in Serbia

Posted on September 15, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Huawei’s Innovations and Development Centre was opened on Monday in the presence of Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic and the Chinese ambassador to Belgrade, just a week after Serbia signed a controversial agreement in Washington which appeared to target Chinese involvement in the development of 5G in Serbia.

Brnabic said the centre will significantly help further digitalisation in Serbia and that despite the Washington agreement, the country was working on many other technologies with Huawei that are a precondition for the introduction of 5G.

“Many things are being prepared with Huawei, which will only be visible in the next few months or a year,” Brnabic said.

She insisted that cooperation with Huawei on the introduction of 5G network in Serbia does not contravene the agreement signed in Washington.

“Serbia is not interested in unreliable technologies either, on the contrary, it is in the interest of the tender for the introduction of the 5G network to be open and transparent, while respecting international standards, which includes the agreement from Washington,” she said.

Li Mengqun, president of Huawei Western Balkans, told media that he expects cooperation with the Serbian government to increase.

“We hope and believe that the Serbian government will continue to create an open and fair business environment for ICT [information and communications technology] infrastructure construction. Together, we can make Serbia a world leader in the digital era with ubiquitous connectivity, digital platforms, and pervasive intelligence,” Li said.

The agreement signed by President Aleksandar Vucic and separately by Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti at the White House last week in the presence of Donald Trump, committed Serbia and Kosovo not to use equipment supplied by “untrusted vendors” in their telecommunications networks.

No firms were named, but the Trump administration has been campaigning internationally to roll back China and Huawei’s role in telecommunications in Europe.

The ninth point of the agreement said: “Both parties will prohibit the use of 5G equipment in their mobile communication networks, which is delivered by an unverified seller. Where such equipment is already present, both parties will commit to its removal and other efforts at mediation to do so in a timely manner.”

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the public auction for the 5G spectrum in Serbia has been postponed for the first quarter of 2021.

However, Huawei has had a presence in Serbia for a long time, increasing its participation in big projects in the last couple of years.

The company has a 150 million euro contract with state-owned Telekom Srbija for the procurement of equipment, services and works for landline network modernisation and has also been named as a partner in developing the 5G network with privately-owned Telenor.

Huawei and the Serbian interior ministry also have a partnership agreement for the introduction of Huawei’s ‘eLTE’ wireless broadband technologies and ‘Smart City’ public security systems including a large-scale surveillance network that is to be installed in Serbia’s capital.

The interior ministry has told Radio Free Europe that details of the agreement are secret, however.

The Ministry of Tourism, Trade and Telecommunications signed a memorandum of understanding with Huawei for the ‘Smart City’ project in 2019, and a strategic partnership agreement for development of the broadband network in Serbia in 2017.

It has said that the White House agreement has no effect on such cooperation.

Combined with other Chinese investment projects under way or in the pipeline, some experts have suggested that Serbia has emerged as the most important country in the Balkans for China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Serbia Keeps COVID-19 Medical Procurement Data Under Wraps

Posted on August 31, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Serbia’s National Insurance Health Fund, RFZO, the public institution responsible for medical supplies procurement in Serbia, has declined to answer an FOIA request from BIRN about the amount of medical equipment purchased during the epidemic, the names of suppliers and how much money was spent on it, saying the government had classified such data “top secret” at the outset of the pandemic.

“Data on medical devices, medical equipment, personal and protective equipment, sanitary and medical consumables procured in Serbia during the state of emergency caused by COVID-19, as well as documentation on it, are marked with the security classification ‘top secret,’” RFZO said in a written answer to BIRN.

Under the government’s decision from March 15, which RFZO quoted, information about public procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic will not be made available to the public until the pandemic ends.

In its request sent on August 12, BIRN asked about the quantity of purchased protective masks, protective suits, gloves, hats and tests for COVID-19 and the total amount of money spent on them.

BIRN also asked about the prices at which this equipment was sold to pharmacies, as well as about the registration of medical equipment at the Medicines and Medical Devices Agency of Serbia, which is necessary for the import and placement of those goods on the Serbian market.

Besides that, BIRN requested information about the total amount spent out of 9.5 billion dinars, which the Serbian government transferred to RFZO on March 31, 2020, “in order to mitigate the consequences of COVID-19 disease”. That point was left unanswered, too.

Serbia reported the first cases of COVID-19 in the beginning of March and declared a state of emergency on March 15 that lasted until May 6.

During that time, Serbia was criticised for deciding to lengthen the time state bodies have to answer FOIA requests. It left many journalists having to wait until the state of emergency was lifted before their requests could be answered.

Serbia’s government faces many questions about its general response to the pandemic, amid claims that there was a lack of necessary medical equipment, among other things.

At the end of June, BIRN revealed that Serbia had under-reported COVID-19 deaths and infections. Data from the state’s COVID-19 information system showed that the number of infected patients who had died was twice as large as the number that the authorities announced. Hundreds more people had tested positive for the virus in June than was admitted.

Montenegro Activist Grilled for Facebook Post on Serbian Protests

Posted on July 10, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Montenegrin police on Thursday questioned the civic activist and member of the “Odupri se (Resist)” movement, Omer Sarkic, for a Facebook post about the recent protests in Serbia.

In an ironic post, Sarkic called on the opposition Democratic front to stage protests in front of the Serbian embassy in Podgorica over police brutality against protesters in Belgrade. He stated a fictional press release in which the DF warned that it will resist police brutality in Serbia as it does in Montenegro.

“I explained to the police officer that my post was ironic, as I wanted to show that part of the opposition and Montenegrin media are silent about the protests in Belgrade. It’s sad that some police officer who was reading my Facebook posts didn’t understand what my nine-year-old son understood,” Sarkic said.

Serbian police this week have clashed with thousands of angry protesters in Belgrade and other cities against the official handling of the coronavirus crisis and the announced re-imposition of restrictive measures, including a curfew this weekend.

In Belgrade, they used tear gas to disperse the crowds. In Kragujevac, protesters smashed the windows of the local police building. Protesters in Novi Sad threw rocks and rubbish bins at the windows of the ruling Progressive Party facilities, at Radio Television of Vojvodina and at city hall.

Cameras caught numerous examples of the Serbian police using excessive force, with several attacks on journalists also reported.

But the violence in Serbia has thrown the mainly pro-Serbian opposition parties in Montenegro off balance. On July 8, Democratic Front MP Marina Jocic insisted that the police in Belgrade had been abused by the protesters, claiming there was no police brutality.

The Front has strong political ties with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party, SNS.

On June 25, Sakic was arrested with two opposition Democratic Front MPs and dozens of opposition supporters after violent protests rocked several towns in Montenegro.

Hundreds of people joined protests in Podgorica, Niksic, Bijelo Polje, Berane, Pljevlja, and Bar after an opposition mayor in the resort of Budva was arrested for refusing to hand over power despite losing control of the local assembly.

Activists and opposition politicians accused the police of breaching their powers during the arrests in Budva, after videos were published showing officers beating people in the streets even when they were not resisting arrest. Videos showed police kicking a man lying on the ground in Budva while another showed them kicking a young man even though he did not resist arrest.

Since January, there were several cases of arrests in Montenegro linked to posts on social networks. In separate cases, two Montenegrins and one Russian citizen were arrested for spreading fake news about the COVID-19 pandemic on social networks.

On April 9, police arrested an opposition Democratic Front activist for posting fake news about the health of President Milo Djukanovic, claiming he had the coronavirus. Radovan Rakocevic, from the town of Bijelo Polje, was put in custody for 72 hours for the offence of spreading panic.

Even before the COVID-19 outbreak became more serious in Montenegro, there were arrests for spreading panic about it. On March 13, the Basic Court ordered 30 days in custody for Milivoje Brkovic for posting a message on Facebook that said state officials were hiding the real number of people suffering from the coronavirus. The country confirmed its first two cases on March 17.