technology Archives

Kosovo Police Seize Crypto-Mining Equipment After Govt Ban

Posted on January 6, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

In two different operations in Mitrovica South and Podujeve municipalities, Kosovo Police seized 70 items of crypto-mining equipment as part of raids following the ban on crypto-mining announced by the government last week.

In the first operation, in Mitrovica South, 67 crypto-producing machines were confiscated, Police said they identified the location in an apartment where investigators found a suspect dealing with “illegal activity”

In the second case near Podujeve, police seized three pieces of crypto-mining equipment.

“We have informed Customs officials and we will take subsequent action in coordination with them,” a police press release said.

No actual arrests, in either case, were reported.

Last week’s decision by the government to ban cryptocurrency mining, citing concerns about energy in a country with an energy crisis, has drawn questions concerning its legal basis.

The Minister of Economy, Artane Rizvanolli, announcing the ban on cryptocurrency mining, referenced emergency measures for electricity protection imposed by the government on December 24, to “restrict the energy supply, valid for a maximum of 60 days”. The government implemented power reductions on December 22 due to the serious energy crisis.

But Arber Jashari, a Kosovo-based legal expert, told BIRN: “There is not enough of a legal basis for the ban of cryptocurrency mining, considering that no special law regulates this issue.”

While the government has the legal basis to take restrictive measures on electricity, there appears to be no legal framework to ban cryptocurrency mining.

On October 2021, Kosovo announced it had drafted a law on cryptocurrency which parliament was expected to adopt by the end of the last year – but the regulation is still pending.

The chairman of parliament’s Committee on Economy, Ferat Shala, was cited as saying that most activities related to cryptocurrency were registered in northern Serb-run parts of Kosovo.

This phenomenon in the north, and associated energy costs, according to him, had pushed the committee to accelerate the drafting of a law to regulate the sector.

“The good thing about this is that all operators in this sector will know that we are working and monitoring and that at some point they will be subject to applicable law,” he was quoted as saying.

BIRN previously reported on how attics, basements, garages and even whole houses in Serb-majority northern Kosovo were being rented out for cryptomining, mainly because for 22 years, northern Kosovo has paid nothing for electricity, the vital component of crytomining.

One local crypto-miner told Reuters on condition of anonymity that “he was paying around 170 euros per month for electricity, and getting around 2,400 euros per month in profit from mining”.

EU Sets Up Joint Cyber Unit to Tackle Steep Rise in Cyber-Attacks

Posted on June 24, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The European Commission on Wednesday laid out plans to build a new Joint Cyber Unit to coordinate responses among members states and EU bodies to the rising number of serious cyber-incidents impacting on the bloc’s public, commercial and private arenas.

The EU, like the rest of the world, has been struggling to meet the threat of what is being called “an epoch of intensifying cyber-insecurity”. In April, a range of EU institutions, including the Commission, were hit by a significant cyber-attack, part of a growing spate of brazen attacks being committed by states conducting espionage and seeking vulnerabilities, as well as criminal gangs often operating out of Russia, Iran and China.

The true scale of the problem is hard to assess, though Bitdefender’s 2020 Consumer Threat Landscape Report estimated ransomware attacks increased by 485 per cent in 2020 from the year before. So far this year, losses of over $350 million have been incurred in ransomware attacks, according to US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The EU’s planned Joint Cyber Unit, to be located next to the new Brussels office of the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and the Computer Emergency Response Team for EU institutions, bodies and agencies (CERT-EU), is an attempt to create a platform to ensure the bloc can provide a coordinated response to large-scale cyber-incidents and crises, as well as to offer assistance to member states in recovering from these attacks.

As such, it will bring together European cyber-security communities – including civilian, law enforcement, diplomatic and cyber-defence, as well as private sector partners – which it says too often operate separately. Invited participants will be asked to provide operational resources for mutual assistance within the Joint Cyber Unit.

Ultimately, the Joint Cyber Unit would allow for protocols for mutual assistance between member states and EU bodies, and for national and cross-border monitoring and detection.

The Commission said it wants to establish the unit on a phased basis over four steps, with plans for it become operational by June 2022 and fully established by June 2023.

“We need to pool all our resources to defeat cyber-risks and enhance our operational capacity,” Margaritis Schinas, vice-president of the Commission, told a press conference.

The move was broadly welcomed by cyber-security analysts, who said that if the purpose of the Joint Cyber Unit is to have a pool of IT experts which can be thrown into the frontline of cyber-warfare, then it is a positive move.

However, Marcin Zaborowski, Policy Director of Globsec’s Future of Security Programme, warns that the new agency risks becoming like the EU Battlegroups in security and defence, which were formed in 2005 but have remained on standby ever since because there was never a time when all EU members states could agree on their deployment. “I am worried you might have the same thing here, that the rules of engagement will mean it is unable to get the unanimous agreement from all member states,” he tells BIRN.

He cites this week’s cyberattack on Poland’s top politicians and officials, which Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland’s chairman of the Committee for National Security and Defence Affairs, said in a statement was “wide-ranging” and carried out from the territory of the Russian Federation.

Aside from continuing confusion over whether this was actually an external attack or merely sloppy internet security by key officials, there remains the question over to what extent a Eurosceptic government like Poland would be prepared to give EU bodies like the new Joint Cyber Unit access to very sensitive, privileged national information.

“I would like to see tasks of the Unit drawn up that are truly workable and practicable, and areas of operation where the EU member states do feel comfortable. If it tries to get into things that are easily blocked by member states because they do not want to share information, then you have an announcement of the Unit but nothing more than a policy,” Zaborowski says.

Jonathan Terra, a Prague-based political scientist and former US diplomat, cautioned that being very public about ramping up and coordinating your ability to respond may, paradoxically, provoke more attacks than otherwise might have happened.

“Hackers, especially those doing covert state work, will attempt to defeat any new measures to show that they can act at will. Then as the cooperative ‘EU cyber-response’ mechanism goes into action, and damage assessment takes place, it will become clear that the key to dealing with this threat is to have a strong deterrent, which the EU doesn’t really have as an independent unitary actor,” he says.

Balkan Investors Join Crypto Trading Craze

Posted on May 31, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Stefan Angelovski starts his day with a cup of coffee and a browse online at which cryptocurrencies to buy and which to sell.

The 33-year-old former fitness trainer in Skopje, capital of North Macedonia, has been trading in cryptocurrency since 2017. Recently, he went full-time.

“I start and end most of my days following the crypto market trends and the daily transactions I make,” said Angelovski. “While I’ve been in this for a while, I’m now finally beginning to be satisfied with what I’ve achieved.”

The global cryptocurrency market has been going through a turbulent time in recent days, with losses estimated at more than 1.3 trillion dollars since a market peak on May 12. But in the Balkans, things are just heating up.

Local media, for example, have reported a 130 per cent increase in crypto trading in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 2019 and 2020, mirroring the global trend in which popular exchanges such as Coinbase have seen their user numbers jump from 35 million in 2020 to 56 million in the first quarter of 2021.

“I think that banks and the banking system are like dinosaurs waiting to die, and it is always a good time to enter the crypto market,” said Angelovski.

The Elon Musk effect

Stefan Angelovski. Photo: BIRN

Angelovski began in 2017 with an initial investment of just $250.

He says he has made most of his money in the past six months, when the prices of popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum skyrocketed.

Bitcoin’s limited supply of 21 million makes it a scarce digital asset, earning it the moniker “digital gold”. Ethereum, on the other hand, is valued for its advanced blockchain technology and the faster transaction times it offers.

But there are thousands of others cryptocurrencies to buy and, as of February 2021, more than 68 million blockchain wallet users where the crypto is stored.

In the Balkans, so-called alternative coins, or altcoins, such as Dogecoin, are becoming increasingly popular.

Originally starting out as a meme coin in 2013 to poke fun at cryptocurrencies and people investing in something they might know very little about, this year its pricesurged by more than 12,000 per cent, meaning someone who invested $1,000 in January made a profit of more than $100,000 by May. The coin tumbled in value to 29 cents following the recent crash in the crypto market.

And while the rise of Bitcoin and Ethereum is based on the success of the blockchain technologies that they are based on, the popularity of Dogecoin is down to the speculative nature of the market, as well as praise from prominent supporters such as Tesla CEO and billionaire businessman Elon Musk.

How does it all work?

To buy and sell crypto on apps like Binance, a user must register a profile with an ID or passport and can then use a debit or credit card to buy from the listed cryptocurrencies and trade in them. Users can swap one crypto for another, or convert them into fiat currencies such as dollars, euros or pounds.

Popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin can also be spent via Bitcoin debit cards, which can be used online or wherever credit cards are accepted. People can also buy crypto from specialised cryptocurrency ATMs, using cards or cash, and scan the code of the required cryptocurrency so that it can be transferred to the mobile wallet where crypto are kept.

When it comes to cashing the profits made from trading cryptocurrencies, there are several ways that this can be done in the Balkans, including selling directly to interested traders for cash, or through intermediaries such as cryptocurrencies exchange offices like the BCX exchange platform in Serbia.

Elena Pupkova, a Skopje-based bookmaker, is one who hopes to cash in on the current Dogecoin craze.

“I became interested in investing in crypto a few months ago,” Pupkova said.“After I read some news that American Citibank is building a crypto trading service, and of course tweets from Elon Musk – the biggest promoter of cryptocurrencies, that was the last step that drew me to invest in crypto.”

“I also have a friend who invested in Bitcoin four years ago, and now she has more than $250,000. If I was sceptical about it then, I’m not anymore.”

Darko Ivanovski, a 33-year-old search engine specialist, first heard of Dogecoin in 2013, but, given the volatility of the market, prefers to invest in better-known currencies such as Bitcoin

“I think that it is much wiser to invest in cryptocurrencies that are known to be more expensive because you know that it is not so easy for them to collapse,” he told BIRN. “For example, it would definitely better to buy 0.0001 Bitcoin, rather than 200 XRP (Ripple cryptocurrency) that no one knows about.”

According to Vlaho Hrdalo, chairman of the Croatian Association for Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies, UBIK, while altcoins arenot necessarily bad, they tend to prey on what he describes as the “get-rich-quick-with-us-if-you’ve-missed-out-on-previous-pumpcoin.”

“As for the outlandish projects, they are often the result of the bull run and not its cause,” said Hrdalo. “In the long run I don’t expect every dog-themed coin to survive, but don’t underestimate them because look what happened with Dogecoin, which everyone thought couldn’t stay afloat during the bear market.”

Money-spinner or world-changer?

Illustration: Pixabay

Besides trading, there’s mining too, whereby people use computers and graphic cards to solve cryptographic equations and earn bits of the cryptocurrencies that they are mining.

Igor, a 29 year-old programmer in Skopje, started out mining for Ethereum in 2017, when the currency was worth around $700.

“At the beginning of 2018, when Ethereum reached the then top price of $1,397 dollars, it did seem like an investment from which you could earn really well,” he said. “However, over time the price began to fall sharply and reached a price that was demotivating and unprofitable to invest in.” Igor gave up, but later regretted doing so.

“By the end of 2020 when prices started to rise again, I decided to re-engage a lot more and invest in the equipment needed for mining. Additionally, I also decided to invest in various different cryptocurrencies.”

But while some see cryptocurrencies purely as a means to make money, others are won over by the belief they will transform the global financial system.

Governments and companies across the region are slowly grasping the potential.

In June, Serbia will start implementing a law on digital assets, according to which if someone owns cryptocurrency they will have to pay tax on it.

While Croatia still does not have a law on cryptocurrencies, crypto trading is regulated with the existing law on income tax, which treats crypto as a form of investment. In North Macedonia, crypto trading remains a gray area given the lack of legislation regulating the trading or ownership of cryptocurrencies.

In Serbia, the popular EXIT music festival in the northern city of Novi Sad announced in May that it wouldaccept payments in Bitcoin, while residents of the Croatian town of Sveta Nedelja have been able to pay for various goods and public services with cryptocurrencies since last summer.

“For me, getting rich from crypto is secondary, because I personally believe that crypto is also a philosophy,” said Angelovski, the Skopje-based trader.

“I understand crypto as a libertarian idea that allows you to be free. It also speaks about personal responsibility, and that there are no limits to how far cryptocurrencies can go.”

“In general, I see countries around the world slowly embracing crypto as a new tool for payment,” he told BIRN.“I also think that people are starting to see and think of cryptocurrencies as something that is complementary to the banking system. In a best case scenario though, I think that maybe around 10 per cent of all money in the world will go into crypto.”

For Pupkova, investing in crypto is a lot more tempting than holding her money in a savings account earning very little interest.

“I think that investing in crypto is kind of like having savings,” she said. “And when I think about all the ways in which I have spent my money over the years, at least here I also have the opportunity to make a profit and maybe double my investment.”

Serbia Eyes Artificial Intelligence in Courts, but Experts See Dangers

Posted on January 25, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The wheels of justice in Serbia sorely need speeding up. But when President Aleksandar Vucic told reporters last month that it would be “very important” to introduce artificial intelligence into the courts, not everyone was reassured.

Vucic’s remark about ‘predictive justice’ and the advent of “new, real and important changes” came in the context of a year-end press conference covering the full gamut of government policy, so he did not dwell on the details.

Now some digital rights activists and legal experts are sounding the alarm about the need to put the issue to full public debate, after an extensive Chinese-built network of surveillance cameras was rolled out in the capital, Belgrade, in 2019 to the surprise of unaware residents.

From identifying likely re-offenders to catching welfare fraudsters, predictive justice is a fast-growing phenomenon, alarming rights organisations that warn that such software can encourage racial profiling and discrimination and threaten privacy and freedom of expression.

Lawyer Djordje Krivokapic, co-founder of the Belgrade-based digital rights NGO SHARE Foundation, said AI has uses in courts in terms of case-management, automation and assistance in decision-making. But its introduction needs to be properly debated, he said.

“This represents a serious change in our society and some public debate and public discussion on this issue in general should be initiated regardless of the level at which it is discussed – except perhaps at the first level when some types of predictive algorithms are used in case-management to speed up the justice system and make it more efficient,” Krivokapic told BIRN.

He warned of the potential for discrimination. “Artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms have a lot of specifics that can lead to increased discrimination – or new forms of discrimination – and special attention must be paid to this.”

The justice ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Uses and abuses

Serbia is already laying the ground for the use of AI in its public sector. In December 2019, the government adopted a strategy to develop the field over the period 2020-2025 and an Action Plan to enact the strategy was passed in June 2020.

Under the plan, the government will establish an Artificial Intelligence Council in the first quarter of this year. Neither document, however, discusses in detail the use of AI in the Serbian court system, which is notoriously slow and prone to political interference.

Besides a legislative framework, Serbia has also begun to automate case-storage and institutional communication in the judiciary.

Lawyer Milena Vasic from the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights-YUCOM, said AI was becoming “a kind of inevitability in almost all areas of life”, and criminal justice could not be an exception.

“In particular, we should keep in mind simpler cases, such as, for example, we now have thousands of lawsuits against banks for loan processing costs that have practically buried the judiciary, or mass lawsuits that most often occur due to a mistake by the state,” Vasic told BIRN.

“Certainly, the use of artificial intelligence could make it easier to manage such cases, but since it is software, we should also talk about potential abuses or artificially raising the number of resolved cases.”

Ana Toskic Cvetinovic, executive director of the NGO Partners for Democratic Change Serbia, also warned of potential issues around discrimination of marginalised groups.

“Regarding the use of AI in the judiciary, it raises a number of other issues such as the impact on access to justice and the right to a fair trial, or free judicial conviction, even when AI is used to support decision-making, and especially if it is AI that would possibly replace judges,” Toskic Cvetinovic told BIRN.

Some forms of predictive justice simply cannot yet be applied in Serbia, YUCOM’s Vasic said.

“In our law, case law is still not a formal source of law and we have a lot of problems with harmonisation of case law,” she said. “What is crucial, however, is to harmonise the position on case law at the ‘human’ level before resolving cases with new methods involving artificial intelligence.”

“Such systems can be easily imagined in countries of the common law system,” Vasic noted, but “even there they suffer serious criticism for violating the right of citizens to a fair trial and are still in the so-called test phase.”

Lack of transparency

Part of map of smart cameras in Belgrade, view on city center. Screenshot: hiljade.kamera.rs

Serbia is already pursuing greater automation, for example in terms of parking in Belgrade.

In August last year, authorities went live with a system named ‘Falcon Eye’ involving 20 specialised cars equipped with cameras that can identify improperly parked cars and take photos, resulting in fines for the registered owners sent by post. Then there’s the Chinese ‘Safe City’ network of surveillance cameras with the potential for licence plate recognition and facial recognition.

There has little or no public debate about the use of such technology, the introduction of which has been criticised as lacking transparency.

Toskic Cvetinovic warned that the “flaws” of AI would be magnified in Serbia given the country’s poor record of protecting human rights.

“In addition, the protection of citizens’ privacy has so far not been in focus when planning or implementing projects that involve mass processing of personal data,” Toskic Cvetinovic told BIRN.

“What worries me most is the fact that the most flagrant violations of this right came from institutions that have public functions, so the trust in new similar projects has been shaken, and with good reason.”

“There is no transparency in decision-making, nor any wider social discussion about whether we need such projects and what are their advantages and what are the possible consequences. A special question is – who manages these systems? How they are protected? Can be abused, etc?”

Krivokapic of SHARE Foundation said Serbia does not have the proper means of monitoring how such technology is used.

“We don’t have state bodies… that do any monitoring of the success in implementing the information system in the public sector, and in general all those tools that are procured, paid for and so on. There is no monitoring,” he said.

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

Posted on December 1, 2020January 26, 2023 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:

Introduce a clear, standardised notice-and-action procedures to deal with illegal and harmful content;
Enhanced transparency on content curation and reporting obligations for platforms;
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.

Huawei Fights Exclusion from Romania’s 5G Race

Posted on November 24, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Between 10 and 12 August this year, the Romanian government websites hosting the draft law that establishes the conditions for eligibility to implement 5G technology in the country – which implicitly bans Huawei – were flooded with suspicious-looking messages.

Signed by users bearing mostly Romanian but also Chinese names, they all expressed the same critical view about the legislation in question: that it would be very unwise to exclude Huawei from the race and that Romania’s interests would be seriously harmed if this happened.

Although citizens had 13 days to make comments on the law, all of these messages were registered over 72 consecutive hours. Before that time, or after it, no such comment was uploaded on the websites.

Most of the messages shared another dubious trait: they were either written in broken English or equally deficient Romanian, which suggested they had been Google translated, produced by some sort of automatic mechanism or filed by people with only a superficial knowledge of either language.

The evidence of what looks like a travesty of a public participation process can still be found at the website of the Ministry of Transport and Communications.

The flood of near-identical messages gives some idea of how aggressively Huawei is fighting its ban in Romania, which responds to national security concerns first raised by the US, which has prevented the use of Huawei technology in sensitive telecommunications at home and wants its allies to follow suit.

The US considers the company “an arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance state” and the US Department of Justice has indicted Huawei “for stealing US technology, conspiracy wire fraud, bank fraud, [and] racketeering”, among other charges.

In Romania, both the centre-right President, Klaud Iohannis, and his allied government have repeatedly voiced full alignment with the US in this matter. In July 2019, Romania became the first country in the world to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the US, committing it to barring Huawei from developing its 5G technology.

The draft legislation to materialize this, presented by the government on August 5, effectively bans the Chinese giant from the country by excluding companies with hazy ownership structures or that are controlled by a foreign government, have a history of unethical behaviour or are not subjected to an independent justice system in their home country.

While the final draft awaits a vote in Romania’s parliament, Huawei keeps opposing its exclusion tooth and nail through all the available channels.

Its latest action started on September 11, when the company sent the European Commission an open letter claiming the legislation put forward to ban the company in Romania and Poland was based on “biased and ambiguous criteria” designed to target “certain 5G suppliers because of their geographic origin.”

Huawei called on the Commission to take measures against “these legislative proposals that are contrary to the fundamental principles of the EU”, including non-discrimination, legal certainty and fair competition.

General view of the headquarters of the Romanian branch of Huawei, the Chinese multinational technology company that provides telecommunications equipment and sells consumer electronics, Bucharest, Romania, 09 September 2019. Archive photo: EPA-EFE/ROBERT GHEMENT

In line with the arguments of the industrially produced comments on the draft law uploaded in August to Romanian government websites, Huawei said its exclusion would “harm European industry, damage European economy, and weaken Europe’s digital resilience” as well as negatively impact job creation – all of it this time in impeccable English.

Huawei is also working on the public opinion front. In recent months, the Chinese giant has published numerous paid content pieces underscoring its importance for Romania’s economy and telecommunications sector, in a bid to gain popular support in its battle to enter the 5G implementation race in the country.

The US ambassador to Romania, Adrian Zuckerman, has fought back, accusing “Huawei and the Chinese embassy” of trying “to mislead the people of Romania” through these actions. The ambassador also reproached “some Romanian press outlets” for “so easily succumbing to the power of the almighty RON [Romania’s currency] and publishing propaganda for these corrupt entities and Communists”.

With upcoming legislative election set for December 6, Romania’s centre-right minority government is running out of time to try to get the Huawei ban adopted in a highly fragmented parliament, where the opposition Social Democratic Party, PSD, has the largest number seats. Most likely, the draft legislation will be voted on during the next term.

Several other EU governments have heeded US warnings and have moved to exclude Huawei from 5G technology development in their countries. Sweden was the last to join a list that includes the UK and several Central and Eastern European states such as Kosovo, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Slovakia, which in October signed separate agreements with th US on that matter.

Globally, Huawei seems to be relying on a softer US policy to China under a Joe Biden administration to regain access to the foreign 5G markets from which it has been barred, as the company’s vice-president, Victor Zhang, told the UK Guardian in an interview about the Chinese firm’s perspectives in the UK.

In the case of Romania, Huawei’s only hope seems to be that the Social Democrats, now in opposition, prove pollsters wrong and win a fresh majority in the December 6 parliamentary elections.

The ruling centre-right National Liberal Party, PNL, firmly opposes Huawei’s participation in 5G technology, as does the country’s third largest party, the centrist USR-Plus alliance.

“We support the memorandum signed with the US on this matter as well as the position of many EU countries; this is, ‘NO’ Huawei for the 5G network of Romania,” USR PLUS parliamentarian Catalin Drula told BIRN. If the PNL does not get a sufficient majority with the support of smaller traditional allies, it might need to form a government with the USR PLUS alliance after December 6.

Less prone to close ranks with the US and the EU, the Social Democrats do not have a clear position on the Huawei file. Contacted by BIRN by telephone, its leader, Marcel Ciolacu, declined to comment on its position on Huawei, or anticipate how will his party vote when the 5G law reaches parliament: “Let’s wait to see the body of the law and then I will give you an opinion,” he said.

New App Aims to Connect Albanians around the World

Posted on August 21, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

In the 30 years that he lived in Switzerland, Valon Asani says he never had an Albanian friend.

“There weren’t many Albanians in the town I grew up in,” said Asani, who traces his roots to Kosovo. The Albanian diaspora is big, he said, but “is very small compared to the total number of people in the countries these Albanians live in.”

So a year ago, Asani co-founded dua.com, a mobile phone app created to connect members of the sprawling ethnic Albanian diaspora around the world. And roughly 200,000 Albanians have since signed up.

Currently, only the dating arm of dua.com – due.love – is live. But 31-year-old Asani and his team plan to launch dua.help and dua.biz in early 2021.

“Dating represents only a small percentage of our goals,” he said. The ultimate goal is to create a connected global community of Albanians, uniting a diaspora scattered across the globe over the past several decades.

Via dua.help, “Albanians who travel abroad as tourists, students, or even seeking employment opportunities, can connect with Albanians who have been living there for longer and seek assistance in filing taxes, applying for a residence permit, finding a place to live and being able to adapt faster.”

Dua.biz, meanwhile, “will allow Albanian businesses in the world to connect with proper businesses run by Albanians in the Balkans and invest, which will bring revenue, create new jobs and hopefully a product-driven economy” in Kosovo and Albania as well as North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia where Albanians also live.

‘A company of Albanians’

Valon Asani, co-founder and CEO of dua.com. Photo: Courtesy of dua.com

Dua.com – dua means love/want in Albanian – is headquartered in Zurich but has offices also in Pristina, where employees are encouraged to dress casual, take naps when tired and share in cake on special occasions.

The company has plans to open offices in the Albanian capital, Tirana, and elsewhere in the Balkans where Albanians live.

“Though we’re Kosovo Albanians, we don’t want to be known as a Kosovar company but as a company of Albanians,” said Asani.

He said there was a false perception of Albanians abroad as sticking to their own, when in fact the only Albanians that many Albanian children growing up in the diaspora spend time with are their cousins or friends they make on trips back to the countries their parents emigrated from.

Taulant Abazi, the chief sales officer at dua.com had a similar experience growing up in Germany and then moving to the US for his studies.

“In my five years in Detroit, where I moved for my studies, it was not possible to meet Albanians,” said Taulant Abazi, chief sales officer at dua.com.

Adapting in the US but also in Germany, where he grew up, would have been easier had he had “the technological means to meet people of the same origin,” Abazi told BIRN.

Within months of launching, 200,000 users from more than 100 countries had created accounts on dua.com, “and 150,000 matches have been made,” Asani said.

“It’s free to sign up and 100 swipes are available over 12 hours in the free version of the app. If users want to have more swipes and to be able to change their location several times, they will need to sign up for premium.”

‘We will do it’

In the two decades since it broke away from Serbia in war and 12 years since it declared independence, the information and communication technology industry in Kosovo has taken big steps forward, but receives little state support.

According to the Central Bank of Kosovo, the country exported 31 million euros-worth of information and communication technology services between January and May 2020, slightly up on the same period of last year.

Abazi said that Dua Solutions, which he manages, is providing its technology to other industries too, having already signed contracts with firms in Croatia and Romania and entering talks with a company in Turkey.

“The technology developed by dua.com programmers can be used for every group that wants to connect worldwide,” he told BIRN, citing the example of a group of online gamers who contacted Dua Solutions to discuss the possibility of an app that would connect online game fanatics around the world.

“Kosovo is an import-dependent country,” said Asani.

“With the dua.com team we are trying to use what we are good at – developing and maintaining a technology that can be used to connect communities with different interests and backgrounds – to change the narrative and bring revenue via exports”.

Asani said Albanians in the Balkans had to get away from the oft-heard expression, hajt se bohet, meaning ‘it will be done’. “If we continue like that, it never will [be done],” he said. “So, we said, ‘po e bojm na’ – ‘we will do it’.”

Croatia’s Burgeoning Fintech Scene Blazes Trail For Western Balkans

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

When it comes to the digitalization of the public sector in the Western Balkans, not that much happened until COVID-19 came along.

But as the pandemic has continued, certain public services have had to become digital by a force of nature, while the pace of others that started on this road in the last few years has accelerated. The same goes for businesses and industries – those that started this process earlier are now ahead of the curve. One industry likely to emerge strengthened by the challenges that the pandemic has brought is financial technologies, fintech as it is known – as more institutions and businesses opt for “digital-only” services.

With an ICT market growing exponentially each year, Croatia is widely seen as the next fintech destination in Southeast Europe.

Some estimates say the country has close to 60,000 active ICT professionals already. It also has many fintech companies with a presence in global markets as far as Southeast Asia.

“Croatia has seen a tremendous improvement of its fintech scene in the past few years, mostly due to people developing their digital skills independently,” Vlaho Hrdalo, chair of the Croatian Association for blockchain and cryptocurrencies, UBIK, told BIRN.

“A recent Eurostat survey showed Croatian young people to be the leading Europeans in the category of digital skills,” he added.

“These young people realized what skills they needed and then acquired them on their own, as no institutional support was available; and it still isn’t.” Hrdalo continued, noting that while global investors are beginning to turn their attention towards Croatia, the local fintech scene still needs further investment.

Success stories, and hurdles up ahead

Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Alexandre Debieve

Croatia’s biggest success story when it comes to fintech and the digital payments sector, arguably, is Microblink, a software company that develops computer vision technology.

When it started in 2013 as a local company, it relied only on the financial resources of its founders. Now it has a global presence in the US, Europe and Southeast Asia, developing AI-powered scanning and data extraction products that more than 100 million end-users use.

Microblink’s products have opened up business opportunities for the company, which has been recognised by the fintech industry. It was listed among Europe’s fastest growing companies for 2020.

The company isn’t planning on stopping now, either. It plans to launch new innovative products that revolutionize the fintech industry.

“Two weeks ago, we launched a first-of-its-kind identity document scanner made to be used directly in a web browser. And we firmly believe in-browser ID scanning holds the potential to reshape the way we onboard financial services for the better,” the company told BIRN in a statement.

Another company to watch is Elektronički računi, a company that primarily provides digital business services. It was founded in 2013, when digital invoicing was beginning to become an important segment of business modernization.

“Since 2014, we have introduced the e-Invoice to tens of thousands of companies,” Josip Kovacec, a member of the board of the company, told BIRN.

“It gave us a foothold in the market in EU member states at the time when the mandatory electronic issue of invoices in public procurement was introduced,” he added.

“The idea was to make the e-Invoice available to everyone, with special emphasis on the SME sector, which usually does not have the financial resources to digitize operations,” Kovacec continued.

He said the company had now positioned itself as the largest private information intermediary on the market, sending about 200,000 e-Invoices a month to the Croatian government service that receives all electronic invoices addressed to public entities.

While there are other successful fintech startups and scale-ups in Croatia, what is lacking, however, is a sense of cohesion that would make the Croatian fintech scene a more powerful trend, experts say.

“There have been meetups and conferences, but the situation around COVID-19 has made such events impossible,” Ivan Brezak Brkan, the founding editor of Netokracija.com, told BIRN.

“For experience and knowledge to compound for the whole community, there has to come a point where they all need to work together to create a ‘fintech scene,’” he added. “A rising tide lifts all fintech – and an active community would help create interest among developers, new companies, and so on.”

Regulation remains a grey area

Illustration: Unsplash/Clifford photography

Besides hosting companies that are developing high-quality fintech products, Croatian towns are also implementing some of those technologies locally.

At the end of June, the town of Sveta Nedelja became one of the first in the whole of the EU to introduce a payment service that includes cryptocurrencies.

Built by another Croatia-based company, the cryptocurrency brokerage Electrocoin, the service enables shops to accept payments in cryptocurrencies for free, converting them into the national currency, the kuna.

However, as financial technologies enter more and more segments of Croatian society, regulations about the way fintech companies conduct their business remain a grey area.

“Not much has happened in this area, as there still are no laws governing fintech, blockchain, or artificial intelligence,” UBIK’s Hrdalo explained.

“UBIK held numerous meetings with Croatian regulators to bridge the gap between galloping industries and dormant laws. This was successful, as the approach of the regulators did change from initial scepticism to acceptance,” he added.

“But without exact rules in place, digital companies in Croatia have to discover where they touch the regulatory perimeter on their own, which isn’t always the best way forward,” he continued.

Experts say general business-related laws affect these companies the most. “For example, high taxes on employment make these companies less competitive than rivals in other markets, and a business-unfriendly administrative system makes it literally uneasy to do business,” Netokracija’s Brkan said.

“While the recently re-elected Prime Minister, Andrija Plenkovic … has said he will make the country more business-friendly, most entrepreneurs remain skeptical,” he noted.

Bureaucratic hurdles and the presence of numerous regulatory bodies pose a challenge for all companies in Croatia.

“Take consumer protection – almost every branch or type of service has its own regulatory agency, and in parts where two branches potentially overlap, there are discrepancies in their procedures,” Kovacec pointed out.

“During the pandemic, most business with the state was digitized, which gave some hope that Croatia could aspire to reach Estonia’s level of digitalization at least. But, with the fall in the number of infections and the reopening of the economy, suddenly everything needs paper again.”

Beacon for the rest of the Balkans

Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Christian Wiediger

As “digital-only” services become the new normal, Croatia’s progress ha the potential to set a trend for the rest of the Western Balkans.

With ICT industries in most Western Balkans countries also among their most prosperous, the potential to be explored is vast.

“We have top IT experts recognised everywhere in the world. But we have not yet realised that this sector can be one of the most important industries in Croatia,” Kovacec claimed.

Recently, North Macedonia took a step towards developing its own digital economy, signing an agreement with financial giant Mastercard. The deal on implementing digital identities would allow its citizens to open bank accounts without being physically present at banks, for example.

This country also has companies that are becoming serious players in the fintech industry, and could potentially follow the Croatian path. “We have one startup that works with storing the digital data and tokens of wealthy people from the Arab world, which the whole insurance industry is talking about,” Skopje-based business consultant Igor Izotov told BIRN.

“Maybe tomorrow we can say the digital tokens and bitcoins of a reality or Hollywood star were stored on a Macedonian software solution,” he mused.

However, for these and similar companies from the region to fully realise their potential, more marketing skills are needed, experts warn.

“As with the rest of the Eastern European startup scene, business skills and scaling are proving most valuable. One low-valued skill in the post COVID-19 era is content creation, inbound marketing and thought leadership,” Brkan explained.

“Self-taught content marketers aren’t given the budgets or the freedom to experiment, so B2B sales for fintech are definitely one of the biggest hurdles – and the strategic use of content for B2B is one of the skills that is lacking,” he concluded.

Dating Apps Help Balkans Rekindle Love in the Time of Corona

Posted on June 29, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Online dating has for, some time now, been the “new normal” for finding romance, with more people around the world using this method during the coronavirus pandemic as they seek a safe way to connect with potential partners. The take-up of online dating in the Balkans is patchier and less Tinder-focused, though data suggests that here, too, the pandemic is changing how people are using the apps.

The global online dating services market was worth $6.69 billion in 2018, according to an Allied Market Research report, and this is projected to reach $9.20 billion by 2025. There are hundreds of online dating websites and apps currently on the market, though Tinder makes a strong case for being the most popular dating app on a global scale.

Launched in 2012, Tinder allows users to anonymously swipe to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ other users’ profiles, based on the photos they post. The US company behind Tinder, Match Group, says its app is more than just a regular dating app, describing it as a “cultural movement” that invented the now-famous “swipe culture”, where users quickly swipe through profiles and make instant decisions about how and whom to date.

Tinder officially claims “tens of millions” of users worldwide, with estimates putting the ‘movement’ at more than 50 million in 190 countries using 40 languages. Tinder users go on more than a million dates per week, with the biggest markets for the app being the US, the UK and Brazil.

During the coronavirus pandemic, despite widespread restrictions on movement and stay-at-home policies, the use of dating apps has increased globally. And Tinder is no exception, with the app recording a rise in use in many of the virus-stricken nations of Europe. In Italy, one of the countries with the largest number of coronavirus cases in Europe, Tinder saw an increase of 29% in the number of daily messages exchanged between active users during the second half of February and March, the company told BIRN in a statement. In Germany the increase over the same period was 33%, while in France it was 23%.

The company also noted an increase in the length of conversations by users; in Italy the increase was 28%, while in Spain, also one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic, the increase was 26%.

Meeting certain needs

Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Andrej Lisakov

The increase in the use of dating apps can be seen as fulfilling the need for intimacy during the prolonged period of lockdown and isolation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, experts say.

“We cannot put a limit on the human need for intimacy, closeness and sexuality during these times – that’s why there has been an increase in the use of dating platforms by as much as 30% in the last two months,” Skopje-based psychologist Bojana Stojmenovic tells BIRN.

Aside from intimacy, the apps also satisfy the need for instant gratification. These and other apps can be seen as a coping mechanism for getting that gratification, especially at a time when the pandemic has forced many societies indoors and brought everyday activities to a halt.

“A key element of the new dating apps and platforms is the speed and availability of finding the desired partner. We live in a time when we are used to instant gratification, to getting things with one click – for instance, we can get a pizza, a call from our favourite friend, our long-awaited shoes or even a partner,” Stojmenovic points out.

While Tinder is the most popular dating app across Europe, in Romania and Bulgaria it is Badoo that is used the most. Created in 2006 by Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev, Badoo now has more than 450 million users globally, with daily messages sent between users exceeding 350 million.

While the company does not have specific data on how much these numbers have increased in the Balkans during the pandemic months, it reports that the length of the daily conversations have, like on Tinder, increased.

“Our data shows that more conversations are happening, with increases of up to 35%. Data is showing and users are telling us that conversations are longer, and with paragraphs rather than one-liners,” Tristan Pineiro, Badoo’s global head of communications, tells BIRN in a statement.

According to Pineiro, these developments suggest a resurgence in sustained courtship and long-distance seduction. “We are re-learning the art of courtship and conversation, and hope that coming out of this all daters – particularly men – will have a newfound respect for honest connection and communication, which in turn equates to better and more successful matches, based on shared interests and deep connection,” he says.

And with video chatting now becoming an essential part of life and keeping in touch, Badoo expects that this “new normalization” will take hold in the dating world, too, Pineiro adds.

Online dating apps in North Macedonia: fact or fiction

Illustration. Photo: EPA-EFE/SASCHA STEINBACH ILLUSTRATION

In other Balkan countries, dating apps are used more sparingly, even under the present circumstances of movement restrictions and curfews.

One such place is North Macedonia, where romantic courtship is still conducted in a predominantly conservative manner. A source working in the adult online dating industry tells BIRN that the use of dating apps like Tinder in North Macedonia are still frowned upon.

“The reason for this is that we are a small market and a conservative environment. For example, an app like Bumble, where only female users can make the first contact if interested, would hardly work in our country,” the source says.

Also, many of the dating profiles contain bogus images, since users are reluctant to use their own pictures. “I think this happens because most of them are still ashamed of using such apps. Also, the number of male users is often disproportionately bigger than the number of female users, and this is not good in terms of how the dating apps function,” the source adds.

During the previous decade, North Macedonia had a dating website called Prijateli that existed for several years. According to the source, a few years back there was some interest in making a dating app specifically designed for North Macedonia, but after the potential investors conducted a market study, they decided against it.

For some, Instagram functions as a dating app instead. 35-year-old Marija from Skopje says that when it comes to dating, her experiences using this social network have been varied.

“There are two types [of people connecting with me]. Some start to like my photos, and then write to me. Others are approaching me as soon as they become my followers on the network,” Marija tells BIRN. “Most are behaving nicely, they begin by either complimenting me, or look for general info, such as where I live, my age, and so on.”

“However, there is also a second category of people who openly want to have sex, stating their intent in the opening conversation. But it is also interesting that 90 percent of those are either married or in long-term relationships and are constantly posting pictures and videos of how happy and in love they are,” Marija explains.

Instagram is also the preferred choice for 32-year-old Skopje resident Dejan when it comes to online dating.

“I don’t like to use dating apps. I have tried several times, and in most cases the profiles turned out to be fake. It’s different with Instagram, since you can actually see if the person you approach responds by liking your pictures or replying to your messages. I feel that this is a much more transparent way than using dating apps,” Dejan tells BIRN.

Regardless of how people are dating online, through apps or social media, the trend toward using the internet to find romance remains strong. And as uncertainty continues over how long the societal effects of the pandemic will last, online dating looks set to become a permanent fixture of Balkan’s dating scene.

French Court Rules against Facial Recognition in High Schools

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

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

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

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

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

Disproportionate measure

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

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

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

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

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

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

Call for total ban

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

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

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

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

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