24 Oct 13 | About Index, Campaigns, Press Releases
‘If Angela Merkel does not like the idea of having her phone monitored by the NSA then she needs to do something about it.’
Following allegations that the NSA monitored the mobile phone of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Index on Censorship demands that the European Union’s leaders address the issue of mass surveillance when they meet at the EU summmit.
Earlier this week, Index delivered a petition to the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy demanding that the EU take a stand against mass surveillance by the US and other governments. The petition was supported by 39 free speech groups from acrss the world and the thousands of signatories included writer and actor Stephen Fry, activist Bianca Jagger, writer AL Kennedy, artist Anish Kapoor and blogger Cory Doctorow. The petition was also delivered to Dalia Grybauskaitė, the President of Lithuania, who currently hold the Presidency of the Council of the EU.
Marek Marczynski, Director of Campaigns and Policy at Index on Censorship said:
‘If Angela Merkel does not like the idea of having her phone monitored by the NSA then she needs to do something about it. It’s time for the EU’s leaders to condemn and put an end to the mass surveillance of European citizens’ private communications by the NSA, GCHQ and other government agencies. They must act now to stop these attacks on our rights to freedom of speech and privacy.’
24 Oct 13 | Europe and Central Asia, Montenegro, News and features
Montenegro is first in line after Croatia to enter the EU, according to some European politicians and parliamentarians; a leader in the Balkan region. But the country’s press is under attack, with Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic leading the line in cracking down on the region’s media.
In the latest Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, Montenegro placed 113th out of 179 countries – a ranking that has deteriorated year on year. Slovenia, a neighbour and EU member, is ranked 35th, and Serbia and Croatia are also far ahead. Even Bosnia and Herzegovina, which by many other parameters unfortunately is behind all of the Balkans, rates well ahead of Montenegro at 68th.
This situation is easily explainable. Only in Montenegro has the rule not changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. For 24 years the power has been held by the same man – Djukanovic. He is the only one from the generation of ex-Yugoslavian war leaders who is still active in politics. He perceives the media as the greatest threat to his absolute rule.
Over the past few years alone, the founder and editor of a daily newspaper has been killed and seven editors and journalists have been physically assaulted. A number of cars belonging to Vijesti, the independent daily newspaper I co-founded, have been set on fire.
Not only have none of these criminal acts been properly investigated, but the authorities and their institutions have done everything in their power to render the investigations meaningless and to ensure that real culprits are not touched. This has increased self-censorship among journalists; many of them are very concerned by the fact that those who commission the attacks seem untouchable, hidden at the very top the government and the mafia circles close to it.
On 1 September 2012, the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of Vijesti, a director, editor, journalist and photographer from the paper were all attacked. This was a warning to their colleagues not to see what they see and write about what is obvious.
Journalism should be a simple and responsible profession that protects the public interest and defends the society from abuses of the powerful and privileged. But in light of the state of media freedom in Montenegro, practicing journalism has been described by representatives from the Council of Europe as ‘a heroic feat’.
When physical assaults have not delivered the expected results, Djukanovic and his regime have switched to financial ones. He forbade the government, state institutions, municipalities and public companies to advertise in Vijesti. A number of private companies that are close to the prime minister, or whom he can intimidate through tax inspections, were “advised” to avoid us. This has caused millions of Euros worth of financial damage to the paper.
On the other hand, he has relentlessly poured state money into the low-circulation national newspaper Pobjeda, which would otherwise have gone bankrupt a long time ago. He has also launched a TV station with cheap programmes in order to compromise the sustainability of the independent TV station.
Napoleon once remarked: “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” Our newspaper does not consider anyone to be its enemy. However, the all-powerful politicians whose irresponsibility and corruption we report on, perceive us as such. To that we tell them the problem is not on our side – if you do not want to have bad things published on the front page, then don’t do bad things!
Europe has a role to play in this situation. We know that freedom of speech is one of the key conditions for progressing in the European integration, because without free media there is no democratic society. For years, the European administration has been seeking concrete results from Montenegro in the fight against organised crime and corruption. Prime Minister Djukanovic has developed a system that is tantamount to a political trade-off. He is completely cooperative and obedient to Brussels and Washington when it comes to regional issues, such as the recognition of Kosovo, support of the Bosnian state as envisioned in the Dayton Agreement and cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
In exchange, the US and EU turn a blind eye while the government harangues civil society and independent media.
It is time for an end to this cynical policy. European officials, whether they are in Brussels or Paris, Berlin and London, should start taking stock of the real situation and status of democracy and human rights in Montenegro. Otherwise, Djukanovic will succeed in a what should be an impossible mission – obtaining full EU membership for Montenegro, while simultaneously extinguishing independent media in this new state.
This article was originally posted on 24 Oct 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
16 Oct 13 | Belarus, European Union, News and features
An old Belarusian joke suggests a simple way of improving one’s life. If you feel unhappy, just allow a goat in your house, live with it for some time, and then take the goat away. In principle, nothing changes – but you feel real relief and happiness! This is exactly the way the foreign policy of Belarus operates.
Close the Swedish embassy in Minsk, and then allow its re-opening. Arrest Vladislav Baumgertner, the CEO of the Russian potash giant Uralkaliy, and then set him free. In principle nothing changed, but each story ended with something like “an improvement in the situation” – or at least with an impression of such.
Last year EU-Belarus relations, already on the rocks, were further damaged by the infamous teddy-bear parachuting and subsequent diplomatic scandal with Sweden. In comparison with that period of “cold war” 2013 looks relatively moderate. For instance, the Belarusian foreign minister Uladzimir Makey was temporarily dropped from the EU travel ban list. Nonetheless, the overall temperature of relations is frosty.
Political prisoners remain jail in Belarus. The fact two of them were released recently had nothing to do with the authorities’ good will; it happened just because their prison terms expired. The decision to suspend the travel ban for Makey was also purely technical. The position of Foreign Minister from the very beginning wasn’t on the EU travel ban list in order to leave a channel for direct communication with Belarusian authorities. Makey, personally, is still on the black list and will not be allowed to enter the EU if he leaves his minister position.
NGOs and opposition excluded from talks?
Since the beginning of 2013 the number of contacts between the EU and the Belarusian Foreign Ministry has increased. EU diplomats call this process “consultations with the Belarusian government”. But it’s hard to say exactly what the content of these consultations is. It is known that the Belarusian side propose to re-organise the European Dialogue on Modernisation. This EU initiative would establish intergovernmental relations between the European Commission and the Belarusian authorities, including an annual meeting of presidents Lukashenka and Barroso. But they have also suggested excluding representatives of civil society and political opposition from the Dialogue.
According to Belarusian authorities’ rhetoric, any relations with the EU within the framework of the Dialogue on Modernisation or the Eastern Partnership should be built “on equal basis and should focus on mutually beneficial projects.” In translation from diplomatic to real language this is nothing but a request to lift all the conditions related to democracy, rule of law and human rights, and simply invest in Belarus’ economic and infrastructure development.
It comes as no surprise that the EU is not ready to fully support these proposals right now. That they’re ready to talk about it, however, does. The next phase of the European Dialogue on Modernisation is going to be limited to experts with a focus on the themes that only the Belarusian government is interested in. In fact, civil society has not been granted the status of full participants in the Dialogue – despite numerous statements and appeals about the vital necessity of this.
Opposition fractured, weakened and ineffectual
In 2014, the European Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) will change their staff, so they should be interested in showing some progress with regards to Belarus. In the absence of real progress, renewal of official contacts with the Belarusian authorities could be presented as an achievement.
It is not worth blaming the EU for such behaviour, though, all the while Belarusians themselves have not done much to change the situation. Neither autocrats or democrats have undertaken significant steps to resolve the current deadlock. The latter manage to disunite – without ever forming a real unity in the first place. Political opposition was formally divided into two parts; the “People’s Referendum” campaign and the “For free and fair elections” coalition. Real differences between the two are hard to explain. Both of them pray to the old God of “communication with ordinary people”. This is a noble task in any sense, but actions proposed are not significantly different from previous unsuccessful attempts to respond to the people’s needs. The oppositions’ slogans are not easy to understand even for their closest civil society allies. Sometimes it feels like these activities are implemented just for the sake of keeping political activists busy, gaining some media attention and getting some resources from donors in the process.
The main aim for the opposition forces is to remain on the political scene until the next presidential elections. Independent civil society organisations are also divided in different camps and have lost their positive dynamics of previous years; still they have much more potential than the weakened political opposition. As a result of disunity among democrats they cannot respond properly to the EU proposals or the challenges of the internal political situation. The EU is listening to the contradictory voices of various Belarusian activists without the possibility to coordinate with them on the main course of action.
Challenges in encouraging change
Thus, the EU policy faces a clear choice: either to wait for internal changes in Belarus or try to actively facilitate them. The recommendations of the European Parliament on the EU policy towards Belarus (the so-called Paleckis’ report), adopted on 12 September 2013, make step in the latter direction. The central idea of strengthening pro-European attitudes among different groups of actors from the civil society to open-minded civil servants via closer engagement in cooperation with the EU looks good. Civil society is seen as one of the key actors in political dialogue with the EU. It is also mentioned that “the National Platform of the Civil Society Forum of the Eastern Partnership is an important and reliable partner and a unique communication channel to the Belarusian people for the EU”. Actions aiming at communicating European policies to the Belarusian citizens, expanding education programs, development of scientific cooperation are also recommended.
The European Parliament doesn’t propose significant changes in the current EU policy, but the EU needs to go much deeper into the Belarusian political situation to insure even these slight changes. The new way lies between facilitation of public dialogue between the Belarusian authorities and civil society on the one hand, and playing the engagement game with nomenklatura on the other hand.
This is not an easy task, it needs a lot of reflectivity, good understanding of the field, strong diplomacy and coordination between various actors’ – civil society organizations, political opposition forces, donor structures, EU member states, and international organizations like Council of Europe, OSCE, UN.
While playing this complicated game in some cases the EU will have to back one internal actor and its strategies against others. And this is what the EU is not ready to do. The overall approach demands to support all the actors who proclaim pro-democratic and pro-EU values. As a result the EU policy creates a plurality and centrifugal trends within the civil society and political opposition that is the main obstacle for consolidation among democrats. Attempts of strategic unification immediately run into charges of “monopolization” and “privatization” of civil society voice. The EU needs a strong internal counterpart in Belarus, which never appears without civil society consolidation, but it is not ready to let this consolidation happen. This vicious circle must be broken to proceed with the Belarus situation.
Of course, there is another way: impose travel ban on Minister Makey, then lift it – and, according to the famous “goat principle”, feel relief…
This article was originally published on 16 Oct 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
30 Sep 13 | Digital Freedom, Guest Post, News and features, Pacific Standard
NSA operations center in 2012 (Photo: Public Domain)
A few days ago the European Parliament’s Office of Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs released a notably pointed briefing paper arguing for Europe to stop trusting American Internet services. The briefing and the committee are the latest forum tosuggest that European states create domestic cloud computing capacities to provide member states legal protection for NSA data surveillance. The report has the not-at-all-subtle title “The US National Security Agency Surveillance Programmes (PRISM) Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Activities and Their Impact on EU Citizens’ Fundamental Rights.” Among the findings:
Prominent notices should be displayed by every US web site offering services in the EU to inform consent to collect data from EU citizens. The users should be made aware that the data may be subject to surveillance (under FISA 702) by the US government for any purpose which furthers US foreign policy.
The argument there being that people will have an incentive to find other websites to use. Particularly for e-commerce. Companies like Amazon, and U.S. airlines and ticketing agencies—Expedia and the like—won’t be pleased, and that in turn will create economic pressure to alter surveillance strategy, the report argues.
A consent requirement will raise EU citizen awareness and favour growth of services solely within EU jurisdiction. This will thus have economic impact on US business and increase pressure on the US government to reach a settlement.
That isn’t all. The report argues for the European Union to simply swear off U.S.-based cloud computing, and to develop local capacity. Again, the argument is largely economic.
Such a policy would reduce US control over the high end of the Cloud e-commerce value chain and EU online advertising markets. Currently European data is exposed to commercial manipulation, foreign intelligence surveillance and industrial espionage. Investments in a European Cloud will bring economic benefits as well as providing the foundation for durable data sovereignty.
Further along, the report notes the different ways the NSA scandal has been understood inside and outside the US. Inside the U.S. a key issue was whether the NSA has been spying domestically, on U.S. citizens, and the implications of that question for domestic data security. Abroad, the report notes, people are understandably more interested in their own ability to protect personal data from the NSA. The briefing suggests E.U.-U.S. negotiations on data security, though efforts at such negotiations have failed previously.
…a casual reader would not understand that the intended target of surveillance was non-Americans, and that they had no rights at all. It seems that the only solution which can be trusted to resolve the PRISM affair must involve changes to the law of the US, and this should be the strategic objective of the EU. Furthermore, the EU must examine with great care the precise type of treaty instrument proposed in any future settlement with the US. [boldface as printed] Practical but effective mechanisms are also needed to verify that disclosures of data to the US for justifiable law enforcement investigations are not abused.
In sum, Europe’s still upset, and talking seriously and in public about how to protect itself from American eavesdropping. Yesterday, Slate‘s Ryan Gallagher flagged a want ad for a counterintelligence professional posted on a Parliament website last July, shortly after the Edward Snowden affair broke. The same body is housed in a Brussels building ID’d as an NSA target in the Snowden papers, according to the Slate report.
This article originally appeared at Pacific Standard. Pacific Standard is an arm of the nonprofit Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy.
