Minsk’s central district court ruled on October 20 that both Nexta’s channel and its logo are “extremist,” ordering the information ministry to restrict access to its content on the Belarusian internet.

The decision to act against the Telegram channel is unprecedented even for Belarus, where authorities have at times shut down the country’s internet to prevent people organizing protests and blocked access to independent online media sites. The channel is effectively the country’s main news source about the protests, with nearly two million people subscribed, a staggering number for a country of about nine and half million. The channel has lost about 10,000 subscribers since the court case was announced.

Coda has previously reported on the crucial role of Telegram channels sidestepping censorship from Belarusian authorities. Legal experts say they do not know how this ruling will affect subscribers or how the Nexta team operates in neighboring Poland.

“I want to understand whether we all need to delete this channel from our smartphones now, whether we can still repost content from the channel, and what we need to do next if we’ve previously reposted content from the channel,” Siarhej Zikratski, a lawyer based in Minsk, told Euroradio.

Tatiana Ravinskaya, a lawyer who spoke to EuroRadio, said that in the past the state has not prosecuted people for simply viewing material which is deemed extremist by authorities: “The law does not hold people liable if they view a link that is published in the country’s list of extremist material.”

A number of channels on Telegram have been targeted by authorities this year, with over a dozen administrators jailed. As the largest channel in the country, Nexta was an obvious target, especially as weekly nationwide protests have continued more than two months after the vote.

“Nexta is not just an important channel, it is the number one channel in the country that is organizing the protests themselves,” said Barys Hartetsky, deputy head of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, in a phone interview back in August when post-election protests began.

Nexta-Live announced in a statement that they are now working on a new name and logo for their channel.

Additional reporting provided by Euroradio, our partner in Belarus. Euroradio, as with scores of online news outlets, has been blocked in Belarus since election day on August 9.

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This week, state authorities in Telangana announced a ramping up of surveillance across Hyderabad. On Monday, in a meeting with government and police officials, K. T. Rama Rao, the minister of Municipal Administration and Urban Development, tasked the police department with doubling the city’s surveillance cameras to about a million.

The authorities say the cameras should cover most of the city, including malls, parks, government hospitals and other public places in an effort to cut crime.

Rights activists are concerned about the impact on privacy. “The police and the administration blindly believe technology is the answer to reducing and almost stopping crime in the city,” Srinivas Kodali, an independent researcher working on data and governance, told me over email. “With facial recognition cameras, they are hoping to track everyone 24/7.” 

Hyderabad has seen a steady increase in surveillance technology over the last decade and signage across the city often reminds Hyderabadis they are being watched. Last year, after a public backlash, authorities took down notices on the city’s metro that said “Big Boss is watching you.”

At the meeting, the police said the mass installation of CCTV cameras in Hyderabad has helped cut crime and kept people safe during the coronavirus pandemic. When authorities made the wearing of face masks mandatory in May, police used artificial intelligence to identify “mask violators” and fine them. 

Kodali said the expansion of surveillance marks an intrusion into the everyday lives of ordinary Hyderabadis. “The key issue is lack of surveillance legislation protecting rights of the public.”

He added: “There is virtually no oversight or procedure on the police accessing or using CCTV footage.”

As Bansal reported, the Indian government is also planning to launch an online repository of images, the largest initiative of its kind in the world, which will match faces to an existing database of criminals. Last month, it was reported that companies seeking to bid for contracts for the Automated Facial Recognition System will be asked to demonstrate that their systems can detect faces with masks.

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Farooq Muhammad had been living in Mexico for two years on a work permit before he traveled to Pakistan in February for what was intended to be a monthlong trip to visit relatives in the city of Multan. Due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, his return to Mexico was delayed until September, by which time his work permit had expired. When he finally managed to fly to Mexico City, he expected to renew his documentation upon arrival, as is normally permissible under Mexican law.

However, when Muhammad arrived at the Benito Juarez International Airport on September 9, authorities refused him entry into the country, and detained him without access to a lawyer. Muhammad, who does not speak Spanish or English, has said he was not given any reason why his entry was denied, or even provided with a translator. The official explanation for his detention is that he was the subject of a “migratory alert,” an opaque Mexican legal procedure for flagging passports on grounds the state is not required to disclose.

Muhammad has accused the Mexican authorities of attempting to pressure him into getting on a return flight, and twice physically assaulting him when he refused.

As harrowing as Muhammad’s ordeal has been, “the most concerning thing is that it's not an unusual case,” his attorney Luis Xavier Carrancá Álvarez told me. “On the contrary, it shows a systemic practice by the migration authorities and their complete disregard for foreigners’ human rights.” 

The case has received little media attention in Mexico, and authorities have remained publicly silent on it.

Back in September, after a few days passed without hearing from Muhammad, who has no access to a mobile phone, his relatives contacted the refugee law clinic at the Ibero-American University, where Carrancá is an advocate. The clinic has previously represented migrants trapped in Mexican airports. 

Carrancá’s colleagues secured an injunction from a judge prohibiting Muhammad’s forced return to Pakistan, and finally managed to visit him in person on September 17. The lawyers have also filed a complaint regarding Muhammad’s case with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a Washington-based international body set up by the Organization of American States.

Carrancá said Muhammad is being held in a waiting room lacking any natural light or ventilation, which he cannot leave except to go to the bathroom, for which he must ask a guard for permission. Muhammad doesn’t have access to a food court or airport restaurants. The only food provided by the authorities is fruit, sandwiches which he cannot eat due to Islamic dietary restrictions, and vending machine products.

Muhammad shares the room, nicknamed “La Burbuja” or “The Bubble,” with other travelers awaiting deportation. Carrancá said no social distancing or mask requirements are observed, leaving Muhammad potentially vulnerable to Covid-19 infection.

Carrancá said Muhammad is “really desperate,” and “psychologically ill from all the stress,” as well as physically emaciated. He has repeatedly requested to be detained in a jail rather than the airport.

To date, Muhammad’s lawyers have only been able to meet him in person twice, and have not otherwise communicated with him.

Muhammad’s case is in line with a new trend under Mexico’s current government. Francisco Garduño Yáñez, head of the government body which supervises migration, is an immigration hard-liner who has “been using the pandemic as a way to punish migrants,” said Carrancá. He cited as an example Garduño’s refusal to provide adequate sanitary measures in detention facilities, as a deterrent to Central Americans seeking entry into Mexico.

At least two migrants are known to have died from Covid-19 in Mexican detention facilities, said Carrancá.

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Last week, it emerged that the Hungarian government is gathering information about foreign travel by journalists. A team of reporters at the new independent media outlet Telex obtained an email sent in June by József Magyar, deputy under-secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Hungarian embassies in EU states. In it, he requested details of foreign study programs and training courses attended by journalists, and which local media they had interacted with while away.

“Independent media has been under attack since 2010 and the pressure from the government is rising. This story is a good example of the mood around the independent media in Hungary,” Telex journalist Tamás Fábián told me in an email.

The reporters who brought the leaked email to light are former employees of Index, once a leading independent Hungarian news site. In July, more than 70 journalists resigned from the publication after the dismissal of editor-in-chief Szabolcs Dull. The threat to Index began in March, when Miklos Vaszily, a businessman affiliated to Prime Minister Viktor Orban, took 50% ownership of Indamedia, the company that manages Index’s advertising and revenue. 

In September, former Index staff launched a crowdfunding campaign to set up Telex, which has already been a target of pro-government media attacks, including that it received €200,000 in funding from billionaire philanthropist Zdeněk Bakala — a man who has been referred to as the “Czech Soros.”

When asked by Telex why the requests were made, the foreign affairs ministry replied that it "does everything necessary to avoid foreign influence in Hungarian internal matters.”

In a television interview last week, communications secretary Tamás Menczer denied that the ministry was collecting information on journalists. He did, however, comment on the disclosure itself, saying that "it looks like the minister of foreign affairs hasn't fired enough people, because documents are still leaking." 

According to Dalma Dojcsak, a lawyer at the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, which provides free legal services to journalists, this reported surveillance is simply “business as usual.” 

“Since, in Hungary, the law allows for members of the cabinet to basically gather information on any citizen, without effective legal oversight from the court, this thing that happened to the journalists is obviously happening on a regular basis but was not leaked before,” she said.

Over the years, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government has clamped down on the independent press. Journalists have reported being denied access to government events and their requests for information being dismissed by the authorities. Others say they have been verbally insulted by officials and their sources intimidated.

The post Hungary orders up surveillance of journalists on foreign trips appeared first on Coda Story.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has leveraged the pandemic to accelerate a long-running crackdown on dissent. Surveillance of social media has led to the arrest of journalists and dozens of members of the public.

Now the authorities are planning to further tighten control of the internet with a new decree that would oblige all web traffic to run through a “national internet gateway.”

According to the document, obtained by Nikkei Asian Review earlier this month, the gateway will be used to enhance "national revenue collection," protect "national security" and assure "social order."

The gateway will be managed by one or more government-appointed operators who will collaborate with state institutions such as the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, the Telecommunication Regulator of Cambodia. The operator will have the authority “to take actions in blocking and disconnecting all network connections that affect safety, national revenue, social order, dignity, culture, traditions and customs.”

The decree was introduced in July and is expected to be signed by the end of the year. Internet service providers will be given 12 months to reroute their networks after the decree is signed, according to Nikkei Asian Review.

Technology experts fear the decree will be used to block online criticism of the government. “While the authorities have said this is primarily due to tax reasons and stopping disinformation about Covid-19, it could also be used for more nefarious purposes, i.e. blocking sites which could have content that would be critical of the government," Marc Einstein, chief analyst at Tokyo-based IT research and consultancy firm ITR told me during a telephone call.

Einstein says the plan shows the influence of China’s “Great Firewall.” “I think what we are going to see is like two spheres of influence in the tech world and I would put Cambodia very much under Chinese side, and therefore I would expect more Chinese style management of the internet in Cambodia than you would see in other countries,” he said.

Coda Story has previously covered how Cambodia’s government has oppressed dissident voices, including opposition leaders and activist monks who have used digital platforms to raise awareness of social and political issues.

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The UK government is preparing to roll out its long-awaited coronavirus tracking app, called NHS Covid-19 and costing £35 million, on September 24.

The UK initially rejected a model of the app proposed by tech giants Apple and Google, which advocated for a model where tracking between people happened on the phones themselves. The tech giants said this approach would safeguard citizens’ privacy.

Under the government’s previous plan, the data from the health tracking apps would have been shuttled into a centralized system, potentially open to surveillance from police and intelligence agencies. 

“That would have been disastrous,” said Jim Killock, executive director of Open Rights Group, a UK organization advocating for digital rights. “But the government has sidestepped that they've done it a different way.”

On top of the privacy concerns, it was discovered that the UK-built app was incompatible with iPhones. In June, the UK abandoned the app it had tested on the Isle of Wight and partnered with tech giants Apple and Google to build a new app. 

The data culled from the tracking app, set for launch on September 24, will be stored locally on users’ phones and not shared with a central database. When arriving at restaurants, pubs, hair salons and cafes, people will be obliged to check in with the app so that they can be contacted later if a fellow patron turns out to be infected — and can do this by scanning the business’s QR codes, which the government have encouraged managers to display in their venues. 

“We need to use every tool at our disposal to control the spread of the virus – including cutting-edge technology,” the UK’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock said in a statement. “The launch of the app later this month across England and Wales is a defining moment and will aid our ability to contain the virus at a critical time.”

So far in the UK, manual sign-ins which have preceded the launch of the digital app have led to a more analogue form of data abuse – with bar staff reportedly using womens’ details to harass them via phone call and text. “Ultimately, if you've got a smartphone you’ll get a better privacy policy,” said Killock. “With the app, it’s unproblematic – I think people should be assured it works well.”

However, the app is just a small slice of the UK’s coronavirus contact tracing system. The wider system, called Test and Trace, which works via a website, is still a black hole when it comes to people’s data, according to Killock. 

According to a campaign spearheaded by the Open Rights Group, UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, has not put serious pressure on the government when it comes to privacy concerns about the test and trace program. The Open Rights Group has drawn attention to the fact that there is no way of knowing if the public’s Test and Trace data is being handled safely. 

Last week, it emerged that the details of more than every coronavirus patient in Wales — 18,000 patients — were leaked online for 20 hours. In a statement, Public Health Wales said the names were published “in error.”

“Nobody can responsibly say that you should not engage with Test and Trace because it's a medical emergency,” said Killock, “but at the same time – can I advise that it's safe? I cannot.”

The post Sidestepping disaster, UK’s coronavirus app launches appeared first on Coda Story.

Under legislation introduced on September 7, the people of Turkmenistan — one of the world’s most isolated and repressive regimes — now face jail terms of two to five years if they escape hospitals or avoid treatment for conditions "recognized as dangerous infectious diseases of an epidemic or pandemic nature.“ 

This amendment to the country’s criminal code was signed by President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, but Turkmenistan has yet to confirm a single coronavirus case within its borders. 

“Cover-ups like this when a country is in crisis generate confusion, rumors and public distrust,” said Rachel Denber, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division, via email. “The government’s response to this — creating criminal penalties for ‘maliciously evading treatment’ is wrong and counterproductive. Laws creating criminal sanctions for spreading Covid-19 are not a legitimate or proportionate response to the threat posed by the virus. Criminalization might also have negative public health consequences, including discouraging people from seeking testing and care.”

In July, a team of experts from the World Health Organization was permitted to enter Turkmenistan. While the group did not report any coronavirus cases, it recommended that state authorities act as if the disease was present in the country. 

Since then, the government has adopted measures to combat the spread of infectious diseases. However, they are inconsistent and confusing to the public. Mosques are closed, transportation is restricted and large gatherings have been banned, including recent celebrations for Eid al-Adha, one of the most important holy days in Islam. Yet some public events have been allowed to go ahead.

People are fined for not wearing masks, officially mandated to protect residents against toxic dust carried into the country by the wind. According to opposition media operating outside the country, those who cannot afford to pay the $17 penalty are punished by being made to pick cotton.

Reports also show growing numbers of people are dying after presenting symptoms similar to those of Covid-19. Reportedly, authorities in one region ordered that new graves be as flat as possible, so they are not visible to satellite imaging.

Diana Serebryannik fled Turkmenistan in 2010. She runs an activist group that now focuses on providing information on how to treat and protect against the coronavirus to medics and ordinary people in Turkmenistan. She said most of the country’s doctors do not know how to care for potential Covid-19 patients. 

“They don’t have instruments, equipment or enough knowledge. They don’t know how to deal with it,” Serebryannik explained. 

Meanwhile, Berdymukhamedov has attempted to take people’s minds off the pandemic. In July, he shared photographs of his domestic summer vacation. They showed him fishing and horse riding while wearing a mask. Upon his return in August, he unveiled his newest book, “The Spiritual World of the Turkmen.” According to the state news agency, this volume is dedicated to the “centuries-old traditions of the Turkmen people and their national foundations.” 

The government has also set out to change the constitution, with the aim of “further democratization of state and public life.” However, activists abroad believe that this really translates as Berdymukhamedov finding ways to transfer his power to his family.

Illustration by Gogi Kamushadze

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Investor Alliance of Human Rights, a non-profit initiative focusing on responsible business conduct, published a report where it urged investors to assess companies’ human rights impact on minorities in Xinjiang. 

Last week, The Walt Disney Company came under fire from human rights activists who called for a boycott of the studio’s latest release, “Mulan”, after it emerged that the $200 million live-action film, which was partly shot in Xinjiang, ends with thanks to several government institutions, including the Xinjiang government's publicity department. 

Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong was among those who promoted the hashtags #BoycottMulan and #BanMulan on Twitter.

In Xinjiang, authorities are believed to have detained as many as one million Uyghurs and members of other minority groups in internment camps, officially described as vocational education and training centers. In June, Coda Story analyzed videos on the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, which showed Uyghurs being forcibly transported in large numbers to factories around the country as part of what Beijing describes as a “poverty alleviation” initiative. 

Louisa Greve, director of global advocacy at Uyghur Human Rights Project, said investors should pressure Disney to make a bold move to salvage its reputation. “Investors should press Disney to make reparations for its complicity. Tens of thousands of separated Uyghur families in the diaspora are stranded in nearby countries without legal status to work, to access medical cases, to enroll their children to attend school. Thousands are being made stateless as their Chinese passports expire, while China refuses to renew their passports unless they return to China, where they would face horrific human rights abuses.”

In the wake of the overseas controversy, Chinese state publication Global Times, citing analysts, described the calls to boycott “Mulan” as “narrow-minded attacks on Xinjiang.” According to Reuters, major media companies in China have received a notice from Cyberspace Administration of China to not cover the movie.

"Disney's Mulan disaster will surely be a universal case study for reputational-risk experts for years to come,” added Greve. “Every brand must already be scrambling to be sure they are not the next Disney.”

Photo by Chris Jung/NurPhoto via Getty Images

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On Monday, Oktay Candemir, a Kurdish journalist in the city of Van in eastern Turkey, was detained by local police for “insulting the memory of a dead person” — the supposedly wronged party being a 13th-century Ottoman sultan.

The charges stemmed from a tweet posted by Candemir on September 3, in which he made light of an upcoming series produced by the Turkish state broadcaster TRT. The show, which will dramatize the Seljuk conquest of Anatolia, is part of a trend of new programming glorifying Turkey’s past. Candemir’s tweet mockingly suggested prominent Ottoman sultans as characters for similar shows.

Authorities didn’t find it funny and Candemir now faces up to two years in prison. He was briefly placed under house arrest and, while his case is pending, remains subject to a foreign travel ban. According to U.S.-based organization the Committee to Protect Journalists, his computer was confiscated by police. 

“This is a clear abuse of power,” said Erol Onderoglu of Reporters Without Borders, adding that Candemir’s arrest reflects “the sensitivity of local authorities” around historical figures now being appropriated by the country’s nationalist movement.

The growing tendency towards the glorification of Turkey’s past, largely promoted by allies of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party, is sometimes referred to as Neo-Ottomanism. In an online conversation with me, Candemir described the ideology as being in sharp contrast to the longtime national veneration of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

While the nation has faced increasing crackdowns on press freedom since an attempted coup against Erdogan in 2016, the charge of insulting the memory of a deceased individual is unusual. His lawyer told Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National that the law under which Candemir was arrested requires a living relative to make a complaint, and that this was not done in his case.

“This is not a charge that we usually see used against Turkish journalists,” said Ozgur Ogret, the Turkish representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Turkey has been consistently among the worst jailers of journalists over the past years, and it’s very easy to end up in jail or prison in Turkey due to journalistic work. Therefore a brand new version of a charge is worrisome.”

Candemir — a writer for the pro-Kurdish publication Nupel — is no stranger to intimidation. “I was detained three times in the last three years and 40 lawsuits were filed against me,” he told me. Speaking of the adversarial attitude of the Turkish government toward the country’s Kurdish minority, he added, “The ruling circles see us as potential terrorists.”

Candemir’s case also underscores the potential dangers of a controversial new law passed in July regulating social media. The legislation requires large online platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to remove content at the behest of the government and to store Turkish user data locally, leading to fears of censorship and privacy violations.

While the law is not yet in effect, Onderoglu said it could curtail “the right of journalists to promote their story on social media, or to react on social media on a major case.”

The post Turkish journalist arrested for tweet making fun of a 13th-century sultan appeared first on Coda Story.

In 1999, Matt Drudge was a rising star on the American right. With his eponymous web publication, the Drudge Report, he had pioneered a new form of aggregative political journalism. Still basking in the fame he had won by breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal the year before, he got into an ugly public dispute with Fox News, to which he was a regular contributor.

After he notified the TV channel of his intention to broadcast a photograph of a fetus undergoing surgery as evidence for his criticism of late-term abortions — a completely different procedure — the network forbade its use. Enraged, Drudge canceled his appearance and published a headline on the Drudge Report that read “I WILL NOT BE CENSORED!”

But that was 20 years ago. Since then, the conservative media landscape that Drudge helped to create has shifted so far under his feet that Fox News’ most prominent anchor recently denounced him as “firmly a man of the progressive left.” And now, a group of anti-abortion activists has launched a publication modeled on the Drudge Report, but aimed at those “tired of” its “leftward tilt.” 

The Drudge Report’s influence on the American right has been waning for years. However, the source of conservative pundits’ current anger at the publication largely stems from Drudge’s increasing willingness in the last year to criticize Donald Trump, to whom he gave largely favorable coverage during the 2016 presidential race.

The new publication is almost identical to the Drudge Report in style and appearance. The Volontè Report is a project of the International Organization for the Family, a socially conservative non-profit group. The new publication takes its name from its editor Luca Volontè, an Italian politician best known for a money laundering scandal in which, as a member of the Council of Europe, he received €2.4 million from Azerbaijani officials.

The Volontè Report is not even the first attempt at usurping Drudge. In December, the failed Republican congressional candidate Dan Bongino launched his own Bongino Report in response to Drudge’s perceived leftward shift. 

“The market structure of digital publishing skews toward delivering ideological control over fact-based information,” said Gabriel Kahn, a professor of journalism and the co-director of the Media Economics and Entrepreneurship program at University of Southern California. 

With the rise of platforms like Facebook, writing that strikes an emotional chord gets more clicks and shares, and hyper-partisan content feeds emotion. “Then it only makes sense that publications respond to that signal and produce highly emotional news,” said Kahn. That’s what the Volontè Report seems to be doing with sensationalist anti-abortion headlines. 

Caitlin Thompson contributed reporting.

Photo by Stefano Montesi - Corbis / Getty Images

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The Covid-19 pandemic hit Ukraine just as the Donbas conflict approached its sixth year. Hostilities began in 2014, when Russian-backed rebels declared the formation of independent republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. Now, both government-controlled and separatist areas in the region are suffering the economic impact of lockdown measures. 

The closure in March of crossing points between Ukrainian and rebel-controlled areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions due to the pandemic has had a severe effect. These crossings are important economic lifelines for the more than two million people who traveled through them every month before the pandemic. Their closure has also prevented students in non-government areas from traveling to university examinations, but the hardest-hit have been elderly residents of separatist areas who needed to cross into government-controlled territory to collect their pensions.

The checkpoints have now been reopened, albeit with restrictions that still make it extremely difficult for most people to pass through them. Many have been forced to take an onerous detour through Russia instead. 

According to Vitaliy Syzov, head of the think tank Donetsk Institute of Information, “It takes about 16 hours to get from one part of Donetsk to another part, through Russia, and they have to pay a fine because they cross the border illegally.” 

During the pandemic, separatist-aligned media outlets have also pushed the idea that their areas are doing a better job of dealing with the virus than Ukraine itself.

“They try to scare people that in Ukraine, the situation is worse than in Donetsk or in Luhansk,” said Syzov. According to a report from UkraineWorld, an online publication focused on countering disinformation, one narrative that caught on in pro-Russian media has been that “the West is trying to rob Ukraine during the pandemic and turn it into a colony.”

In the war-torn Donbas region, all sides have struggled with medical shortages. Ukraine as a whole is currently seeing a spike in cases that is likely to keep rising. “People are not happy with public health services on both sides,” said Orysia Lutsevych, manager of the Chatham House’s Ukraine Forum.

While reliable statistics are hard to come by, Igor Mitchnik of Drukarnia, a civil society center in Sloviansk, a city in the Donetsk region under government control, said that separatist areas were slow to take the virus seriously. “Until March they tried to pretend that Covid is not affecting them,” he explained. 

According to Syzov, separatist officials in Luhansk imposed quarantine measures opportunistically, in order to suppress a miners’ strike in June. The Donbas region is heavily dependent on coal mining and has been plunged into crisis as a result of the current global economic downturn.

If there is one bright side of the pandemic’s effect on Ukraine, it is that it may have played a part in reducing the bloodshed, as both sides have largely respected a ceasefire. “Right now we have an unprecedented situation in which we have many days without any ceasefire violation. We’ve not had such a calm situation since 2014, since the conflict began,” said Nikolaus von Twickel, an analyst at Civic Monitoring, which publishes research on the Ukraine conflict.

Photo by Alexander Reka/TASS via Getty Images

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Back in July, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda secured a second term in office on a platform of anti-gay rhetoric. Now, activists say that homophobia is rising within the country. The latest example of this is a government-issued cash reward for a town that has declared itself “free of LGBT ideology.”

The funding was allocated to the southeastern town of Tuchow by the Ministry of Justice after the European Union rejected its application for grants in response to the resolution. Handing over around $68,000, the Polish government has roughly tripled the sum that the municipality could have received from the EU. 

“It’s not just replacing the same amount, it’s giving more to show to other cities that they should not be scared to also make such resolutions,” explained LGBTQ activist and photographer Bart Staszewski.

Tuchow is not the only town to pass such a resolution — around 50 municipalities across Poland have declared themselves free of what they term “LGBTQ ideology.” In July, the EU announced that it would not provide funding to six Polish towns that had made similar statements.

Poland is, at present, the largest net recipient of EU funding. However, Duda has described the organization as “an imaginary community from which we don’t gain much.”

Since January, Staszewski has traveled through Poland’s “LGBTQ-free” zones, documenting the lives of LGBTQ people who live within them. 

“It’s disgusting and horrible,” he told me during a telephone conversation. “It’s simply an example that the Polish state is sponsoring homophobia more obviously than we’ve ever seen before.”

Staszewski is a member of Love Does Not Exclude, Poland’s largest LGBTQ group. According to him, fewer people have been willing to be photographed for his project since Duda’s re-election. In larger cities, activists have been detained by police for protesting against what many are calling homophobuses — trucks covered with anti-LGBTQ messages that are driven through city streets by supporters of so-called family values.

While homophobia has long been present in the largely Catholic and conservative country, LGBTQ rights became a central campaign issue in the past year. “We will have a choice between the white-and-red Poland represented by the current president and a rainbow Poland,” said the chairman of the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party’s executive committee, ahead of the presidential election.

Now, these attitudes appear to be there to stay.

“Everyone was thinking that it was just a political game during the election time,” Staszewski said. “Now, everybody sees that it is something that is ongoing. I think it’s getting worse and worse. We are a public enemy.”

The post Polish government gives cash to ‘LGBT-free’ town appeared first on Coda Story.

The coronavirus pandemic and the closure of schools across the world has created a boom in education tech software. According to Crunchbase, a site that tracks startup industry trends, five times as many families joined ClassDojo in the last week of March than in any week in the company’s history. 

School closures in the U.S. have affected at least 55.1 million students in 124,000 public and private institutions. Now that most schools have moved to remote learning or a hybrid model of in-person classes and online education for the fall, concerns about discrimination and privacy have resurfaced as parents and teachers become more reliant on ClassDojo and similar platforms.

Investment in education tech has soared in the past two years, hitting a record $18.66 billion in 2019, and is predicted to accelerate in the wake of Covid-19. In addition to ClassDojo, Google Classroom, K12 and Powerschool are some of the players set to benefit from the move to online learning.

“We're now running a nationwide, real-time, high-stakes experiment in what happens when you put digital ed tech into the home environments of almost every child in the country,” said Leah Plunkett, a faculty associate of Youth and Media at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and a professor at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. 

ClassDojo, which is used by at least one child in 95% of elementary schools, assigns colorful, kid-friendly monster avatars to each student. Teachers then award or deduct points based on behavior, which is shared with parents in real time and, typically, placed on display in the classroom for students to keep score. 

The app, which is used in 180 countries around the world, has been accused of a number of privacy invasions, including data harvesting in the U.K. After a 2014 New York Times article slammed ClassDojo and other tracking apps over privacy concerns, the company changed its policy and now deletes records of points awarded to students by teachers after one year.

“Private companies are mapping a very large and very unregulated dataset on kids in their home environment during a global pandemic, because the school has moved into the home,” said Plunkett. “I’m very concerned that, as information about attendance, discipline, or social and emotional learning becomes aggregated, it can be shared, or analyzed or reaggregated by providers, in addition to the school community itself.”

Illustration by Sofiya Voznaya

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Mawada Eladhm and Hanin Hossam are just two of at least nine young women in the country to have recently received prison terms and heavy fines for posting videos on platforms including TikTok and Instagram.

All were charged with “violating family values” and inciting debauchery under a controversial cybercrime bill passed by the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in August 2018. This week, the Egyptian state went one step further, passing an order from the prosecutor general and a Cairo criminal court to freeze Eladhm and Hossam’s funds.

“When it comes to Egypt, the issue is the cybercrime law that is extending and legalizing the oppression of the state towards its own citizens from the physical space to online,” said Mohamad Najem, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa digital rights NGO SMEX.

Najem explained via WhatsApp that the law is notoriously vague, including provisions related to the “protection of family values” and “breaching public morals.” He added that such clauses “are being mainly applied against women.”

Eladhm and Hossam’s videos of themselves dancing and lip-syncing to pop songs may seem simple and innocent, but they attracted hundreds of thousands of followers. These large audiences are easy to monetize, allowing influencers to earn large sums from their content. The Egyptian authorities, however, consider that such online activities attack the fabric of traditional society, promoting immorality and encouraging prostitution.

This position is consistent with a wider effort to tighten the state’s grip on social media. In addition to accusing TikTok of spreading immorality, some politicians have called for it to be blocked entirely. A Cairo administrative court will also decide on September 20 whether to ban YouTube, one of the country’s most popular online platforms. 

Najem explained that while nations such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also use broad legislation to censor and criminalize the online activities of residents, Egypt’s TikTok trials stand out because of the large number of cases and the apparent focus on one gender. 

“Having single women controlling their own bodies outside the usual norm and definition might be challenging for the system, therefore it’s easier to criminalize them than to accept them as part of society,” he said.

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Now, a new report by Newsguard, a U.S.-based tech company that tracks online disinformation, shows that QAnon’s ideology is growing across Europe. Websites, pages, social media groups and accounts have appeared in countries such as the U.K., France and Italy, gathering large numbers of followers. 

Researchers concluded that themes central to QAnon, which was birthed with a post on the web forum 4Chan in late 2017, have been deftly fitted to various political environments overseas. Along with playing to widespread concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic, they state that the movement’s ability to tailor itself to different national audiences has played a significant part in its global growth.

“Early on, European websites raised questions about how QAnon theories applied to their countries, underlining that the deep state at the heart of these theories knew no borders. This allowed these theories to slowly morph, and target local representations of the ‘elites’ at the heart of Q’s narrative,”  the report reads. 

For example in July, the German website Compact-Online, which propagates right-wing views and pro-Kremlin disinformation, echoed accusations leveled at high-profile U.S. figures such as Hillary Clinton and former president Barack Obama by claiming that German politicians are also secretly managing pedophile networks. QAnon followers also consider Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron of France to be under the control of a shadowy cabal pulling the strings of international politics. 

“Conspiracy theories are inherently malleable, and some have been smoothly adapted to fit new national contexts. European countries will have their own issues that fit neatly with QAnon narratives — Jimmy Savile’s prolific history of sex abuse in the U.K., for example, or Prince Andrew’s implication in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal,” said David Lawrence of the British advocacy group Hope not Hate. 

“More widely, in recent years trust in institutions has eroded in many European countries, opening the door for conspiracy theories and the far right — an issue that has been exacerbated by the pandemic and subsequent government measures.”

This week, The Guardian published an investigation that studied over 170 European QAnon groups and accounts on Facebook and Instagram, with more than 4.6 million followers. According to the article, dozens of new groups have appeared since June and the following of existing accounts has increased by 34% in the same period. 

Meanwhile, back on home turf, QAnon theories are moving ever closer to the halls of power. The conspiracy has exploded in the U.S., with hundreds of thousands of adherents and millions of interactions on social media. This week, Marjorie Taylor Greene, an open supporter of the movement, won the state of Georgia’s Republican primary for the House of Representatives and is almost certain to gain a place on Capitol Hill. 

She is not the only QAnon follower on the ballot in November. According to Media Matters, around 20 candidates across the country have endorsed or spoken favorably about the theory.

“QAnon believers are running for office and in some cases winning, and that could happen in other democracies. It also inspires violent crime and terrorism, which is why, here in the U.S,, the FBI has named it as a domestic terrorism threat,” said Melissa Ryan, CEO of CARD Strategies, a firm that helps progressive organizations fight disinformation. 

“QAnon will probably outlast Trump here in the U.S. It's terrifying to think of it taking hold in multiple countries, where folks can coordinate online and keep the conspiracy alive.”

Photo by Grischa Stanjek / democ.

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The coronavirus presents both a monumental challenge and a huge opportunity to advocates for the human papillomavirus vaccine. As scientists race to find a safe and effective method of immunization against Covid-19, vaccine campaigners are hoping to encourage more people to agree to be inoculated against HPV, which causes cervical cancer.

“We’ve never had a focus on vaccines like this before, so in many ways there’s never been a better time to work on increasing vaccine takeup. We could actually see this work really well for increasing acceptability of the HPV vaccination, increasing dialogue and overcoming vaccine hesitancy along with spurious claims made by the anti-vax movement,” said Rose Brade, a representative for Cervical Cancer Action Elimination and an international policy advisor at Cancer Research UK. 

But the HPV vaccine and other routine immunizations are also at risk of being sidelined by coronavirus restrictions. In April, the World Health Organization warned that 117 million children could miss out on the measles vaccine as a result of such measures. In July, a study by The Lancet found that it was imperative that African nations keep up with their vaccination schedule. It stated that “The deaths prevented by sustaining routine childhood immunisation in Africa outweigh the excess risk of Covid-19 deaths associated with vaccination clinic visits, especially for the vaccinated children.”

Global access to the HPV vaccine has been significantly affected by the pandemic. In Kenya, where nine women a day die from cervical cancer, its introduction in October 2019 was seen as a major breakthrough. 

Benda Kithaka, cofounder of Women 4 Cancer, a health advocacy group committed to reducing rates of cervical cancer in Kenya, had been working up to the launch of the vaccine since 2012. “We were actually just kickstarting the rollout proper,” she said. “Marshalling the resources to be able to reach our targets. And then this monster comes along: Covid-19.”

Since the outbreak of the virus, uptake among girls in Kenya has been hindered. “We’re losing traction with the gains that we had made – both on the vaccine side as well as the cervical cancer screening side,” said Kithaka. “My biggest worry is that because of the fear of Covid-19, we have less women accessing screening; we have less families taking girls to be vaccinated.” 

According to a July statement by Patrick Amoth, the country’s health services director-general, less than half the 800,000 girls targeted by the program this year have received their shot. 

“The closure of schools for the December holidays, and subsequently due to Covid-19 concerns, reduced the momentum for vaccination,” he told Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper.

As cases continue to rise in Kenya, the country is facing a shortage of personal protective equipment, which, Kithaka explained, has left families afraid to go to vaccination and screening clinics. “It’s a moral dilemma we face,” she said. 

Last week, 194 countries formally agreed on the WHO’s global strategy to eliminate cervical cancer. A key element to this campaign is to ensure that 90% of girls receive the HPV vaccine by 2030. But experts say those targets will only be met if more is done to ensure that immunization programs are possible, even amid national lockdowns. 

“People are more concerned with Covid vaccination,” said Brade. “Schools are being disrupted, and they are the primary and most effective method of delivery. Girls aren’t getting their first or second doses. If schools aren’t restarted, how will we address the backlog?”

Illustration by Sofiya Voznaya

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The use of surveillance cameras is exploding in cities across the world, with China leading the pack, according to a new report. The top twenty most-surveilled cities are all in China, according to the findings, with the exception of London and Hyderabad, India. American cities, meanwhile, such as Atlanta, have fallen out of the top twenty since the report was conducted last year. 

The report, conducted by researchers at Comparitech, a UK-based pro-consumer tech website, examined the 150 most populated cities in the world and found that of the more than 770 million cameras installed in public spaces worldwide, more than half of them are in China. 

Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province in northern China, was the most closely-watched city in the world, with one camera for every ten people. Rapid innovations occurring in facial recognition now means that any CCTV image can be used in tandem with the technology. 

Other cities in the top twenty included Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, home to China’s Muslim minorities and one of the most tightly surveilled regions in the world. Urumqi came thirteenth on the list. 

Paul Bischoff, the author of the report and a privacy advocate, said the number of surveillance cameras around the world could be, in reality, far higher and Comparitech figures should “be taken with a grain of salt.”

“I never trust a number that comes from the Chinese government, I think they might be downplaying the numbers,” he said. “China’s always been a surveillance state — it started with the internet and now it’s leaked over to the physical realm. They want to make sure they know where people are going, all the time.” 

Bischoff added that the cost of surveillance equipment has plummeted in recent years, incentivizing governments and local authorities to ramp up the number of cameras installed in our cities.

The report also found that the number of cameras did not have a discernible effect on crime rates. “There’s not much of a correlation between the crime index and the number of cameras,” said Bischoff.

Photo by Awanish Sharma

The post The most-surveilled cities in the world are almost all in China appeared first on Coda Story.

Formula One racing driver Lewis Hamilton is the latest celebrity to push conspiracy theories about the coronavirus to his 18.3 million Instagram followers. On Monday, the six times world champion uploaded a video to his Instagram story that referred to a groundless conspiracy theory that has gained massive traction since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak, claiming Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was lying about coronavirus vaccine trials. 

The clip, which showed Gates discussing the trials, was captioned “I remember when I told my first lie.”

Hamilton received volumes of backlash for his post. He later released a statement saying he had not noticed the caption on the video, believing he was simply posting footage of Gates speaking. Hamilton said he was still “learning” about getting his social media content right. 

"I'm not against a vaccine and no doubt it will be important in the fight against coronavirus, and I'm hopeful for its development to help save lives," he wrote in his apology post. 

"However after watching the video, I felt it showed that there is still a lot of uncertainty about the side effects most importantly and how it is going to be funded."

Over the weekend, British rapper Wiley was slammed for tweeting a slew of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, broadcast to half a million followers claiming Jews were secretly controlling global affairs and likening Jewish people to the Ku Klux Klan. 

In response, influential Twitter users participated in a 48-hour boycott of the social media platform to demand a tougher line on anti-Semitic content. Wiley has now been given a weeklong ban from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. But, disinformation experts say that platforms’ response to conspiracy theorists isn’t as easy as just banning them. 

“Outright banning just reinforces and galvanizes the hardcore community,” said Joe Ondrak, a senior researcher at Logically, a UK startup that uses artificial intelligence to track disinformation. “Once a level of platform intervention has taken place that’s considered an endorsement that they’re on the right track,” he explained, adding that conspiracy theorists simply believe that “they wouldn’t be censored if they were saying the wrong thing.”

Since April, singer Robbie Williams has also joined the cache of celebrities spouting conspiracies, after he began to parrot QAnon doctrines about Hillary Clinton and the debunked “pizzagate” theory during a YouTube interview. 

Ondrak explained that followers of QAnon often aren’t interested in celebrity endorsements, but instead strive for political affirmation. He added that instead, celebrities do the work of bringing in legions of new recruits — primarily of people who hadn’t come across the theories before. “People who read this stuff and are already interested in it are already pretty far gone,” he said. “These celebrities are bringing conspiracies to a new audience and it's that new audience who really need to be told that this might not necessarily be the truth.”

The post More celebrities join the growing conspiracy theory movement appeared first on Coda Story.

The country’s biometric system was intended to reduce incidences of "double registration"  — a problem that mainly affects ethnic Somalis with Kenyan citizenship who falsely registered as refugees in the 1990s in order to receive vital food aid. However, tens of thousands are still in limbo. 

Earlier this week, member of parliament Aden Duale denounced Fred Matiang'i, the nation’s interior cabinet secretary, demanding an explanation for why 20,000 Kenyans are still ineligible for identification cards, including 18,500 stateless youths.

Garissa County, which Duale represents, has some of the highest numbers of double registrants in Kenya and is home to one of the world’s largest refugee camps. Over the past six years, government task forces have been created to delist Kenyan citizens from the national refugee database, with questionable success.

Duale requested a report of the vetting process from the Kenyan Interior Ministry, which heads the biometric registration project, and a statement from the security committee of the National Assembly.

Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency — which, along with the government oversees the national database — is also waiting for guidance. “The report is currently with the government. We are also waiting for their feedback, and then we can move forward with corrections to the verification process,” said Eujin Byun, spokesperson for UNHCR Kenya.

In Kenya, the Ministry of Interior and UNHCR are in the process of merging their parallel registration systems in order to sync respective data on refugees and asylum seekers. But the refugee protection agency is ultimately without the power to expedite the feedback report they need to make assessments.

“UNHCR is a guest of the government and can only support the government in registering refugees; it’s ultimately a function of national authority,” Byun said.

Kenya’s ID card program has been criticized for further marginalizing already vulnerable populations, but double registrants are not the only people who encounter bureaucratic hurdles. Kenya’s elderly are affected too.

Earlier this week, Kenyan philanthropist Stanley Kamau called on the government to review registration criteria, to improve access to essential social services for older people.  

Kamau said that using ID cards — required for many aspects of daily life in Kenya, such as registering a SIM card and opening a bank account — as the only proof of age has excluded those without documentation from receiving state assistance, to which people aged 70 and over are entitled.

“We have so many elderly people who have no ID cards and should not be locked out on account of lack of it,” Kamau said.

Photo by Klein Ongaki and Rich Allela

The post Kenyan MP demands accountability for stateless youth appeared first on Coda Story.

Our story featured a Filipino administrator in a labor camp near Doha and found that because most free Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) apps such as WhatsApp and Skype, Facetime were blocked by authorities in Gulf countries like Qatar, Oman and United Arab Emirates, migrants were hardly able to communicate with their friends and relatives back home.    

Human rights organizations have called for Gulf countries to lift the ban on free VoIP services. The UAE, Qatar and Oman have eased some restrictions by permitting the use of platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams for the purpose of distance learning.

But not much has changed for migrant workers who are still facing connectivity issues with VoIP services when trying to call their families. On July 8 Euro-Mediterranean Monitor, an independent human rights organization released a statement at the 44th session of the Human Rights Council held in Geneva:

“The pandemic has compelled people all over the world, including the Gulf region, to use such essential applications to resume their work and education online, to connect virtually with family members and friends, and to access health related information and guidance. Hence, not lifting the ban hinders individuals’ ability to enjoy a normal life, stay home or socially distance.”

Governments in Gulf countries often limit how digital communications apps can be accessed as a means to isolate migrant populations, said Khalid Ibrahim, executive director at the Gulf Centre for Human Rights, Beirut-based NGO.

“Migrant workers — they are always under pressure, they always have difficulties, they are always in poor conditions, so they try to isolate them from having communication with the outside world,” said Ibrahim, in a telephone interview. 

Migrant workers are still faced with paying for expensive calls to speak to their families. “They are saving money to have a future in their countries, they are not saving money to stay here. They are not going to spend their savings on calls,” Ibrahim continued. “They don’t have access to full payment, their salaries are reduced, their conditions are bad, they are facing the risk of Covid-19 so we don’t expect them to spend a lot on their calls.” 

Ibrahim said most migrant workers in the Gulf face a “hostile environment.” “This is just confirmation of what we already know,” he added. 

Photo by AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES.

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From Perm to Omsk to Novosibirsk, understaffed health care facilities are struggling to keep infection rates down and adequately protect medical workers. In regional hospitals “the situation is much more difficult than in Moscow” said Anastasia Vasilyeva, head of the Doctors’ Alliance, an opposition-aligned trade union.

Her organization has called attention to the plight of medical workers around the country via an interactive map, which shows the locations of health worker fatalities due to Covid-19, currently numbering 573, as well as complaints the union has received regarding issues like unpaid salaries or lack of protective equipment.

The Doctors’ Alliance also says that many doctors who were infected with the virus have not received compensation they are legally due from hospitals, because they are required to prove that the infection occurred at their workplace.

In May, Elizaveta Antonova reported for Coda Story’s Russian edition on Sergey Sayapin, a doctor at a St. Petersburg hospital where staff reported having to buy their own gloves and reuse disposable protective suits until they broke.

Sayapin had contracted the virus and blamed personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages in the hospital where he worked. Recently, we learned that he lost his job shortly after filing paperwork requesting compensation.

“I don’t believe in conspiracies, but in this case how could you not?” he asked. “As soon as I started talking about the problems in the hospital — the lack of action from management, especially from the head doctor, the lack of protective equipment, the mess with payments — all of a sudden the necessary documents appeared and they quickly laid me off.”

A Human Rights Watch report from June documented reprisals faced by health workers and their union representatives for speaking publicly about unsafe working conditions.

During the pandemic, Vasilyeva, who has been outspoken in her criticism of the government’s Covid-19 response, has been detained by police, and last week her organization’s press secretary was abruptly pressed into military service.

Meanwhile, health authorities continue to underreport Covid-19 deaths nationwide by not listing the virus as cause of death in cases where patients have died from complications of the disease. President Vladimir Putin, who recently won a constitutional referendum allowing him to remain in power by extending term limits, was criticized last month for abruptly lifting lockdown restrictions in time for a Victory Day parade.

Even according to officially reported numbers, Russia is ranked fourth in the world by total number of infections, after the U.S., Brazil, and India, with more than 6,000 new cases daily. But despite these grim statistics, “the messaging for Russians is now that they can freely go outside and go about their business — it’s as if Covid is over,” said Laura Mills, a Human Rights Watch researcher.

Mills said hospitals which were specifically designated as Covid-19 facilities have had some success acquiring PPE and medical equipment, often through charity drives. But with the advent of community transmission, ordinary hospitals cannot realistically keep out the virus — and, in terms of medical protections for health workers, “the situation in non-coronavirus hospitals is worse than the situation in coronavirus hospitals” said Vasilyeva.

Photo by Sefa Karacan/ Anadolu Agency Via Getty Images

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Last month, Germany released a coronavirus tracing app that has eased the concerns of digital rights activists and the privacy-sensitive German public. 

Released on June 16, the “Corona-Warn-App” uses Bluetooth to detect and contact people who may have been exposed to someone who has contracted the coronavirus. Germany initially pursued a centralized approach — in which anonymized personal data is stored on a central server accessible by the government — then ceded to privacy concerns and pivoted to a decentralized version, in which data is stored on users’ phones.

Beyond decentralization, the app is open source, with 100% of its code published online and a platform for people to comment, ask questions, and make suggestions. Germany’s Chaos Computer Club — Europe’s largest association of hackers, which often campaigns against surveillance technology — has signaled approval, praising the commitment to transparency shown by the German app’s developers. 

Public health authorities say that digital contact tracing can slow the spread of the virus. A study by the University of Oxford found that tracing apps start working when 15 percent of a population uses them. Figures released this week show that nearly 19 percent of the German population has downloaded the app, a strong start in a country where almost half of the population said they would not download a tracking app, according to a survey by the public broadcast group ARD. 

But the 15.8 million downloads are not necessarily indicative of proper use. 

“Exceeding 15 percent of the population seems promising,” said Melyssa Eigen, a researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. “But the app is completely voluntary. It's voluntary to download and voluntary to share that you've been infected.”

Eigen says it is likely that some users download the app only to receive warnings about other people. 

“If you become infected, there's nothing forcing you to share that information,” she said. That’s one of the downsides to a decentralized app. In a centralized approach, the government could intervene based on a person’s contact list. 

“There is a trade-off between privacy and efficiency.” 

For those who cannot avoid crowded situations — people who live or work in densely populated areas — the app may be less effective in preventing the spread of the virus, as it merely acts as a warning. But, overall, the positive reception to its launch could lead to more testing and lower case numbers. 

“It's pretty impressive that in a country where people are really into their digital rights and fear government surveillance that it's even been downloaded as much as it has,” Eigen said.

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Añez is the second Latin American leader to test positive for coronavirus, following Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro last week. She is also one of many politicians around the world who have been spotted wearing a “virus blocker” badge – an unproven device that claims to “sanitize” the air around the wearer and protect them from Covid-19. 

“I have tested positive for Covid19, I am OK, I will work from home,” Añez tweeted on Friday. “Together, let's get ahead.”

Sold under various guises as a “virus shut out” or “air doctor” badge, Añez was seen wearing the device around her neck while attending the delivery of protective equipment back in May.

In Bolivia, advertisements for the devices have been circulating on WhatsApp and Facebook, where they’re available for around $17. One Facebook ad falsely claimed the device could “eliminate the threat” of Covid-19. “Don’t take risks, avoid contagions,” the advert warned. 

The devices, which contain the chemical chlorine dioxide, were originally created in Japan. Since the beginning of the pandemic, they have also been spotted on politicians including South Sudan President Salva Kiir, Lebanese politicians Gebran Bassil and Nabih Berri, and Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov – who also fell ill with the virus in early May and has since recovered. 

In Indonesia, the Minister for Agriculture Syahrul Yasin Limp has jumped on the global popularity of the badges by announcing the launch of an Indonesian version, using eucalyptus instead of chlorine dioxide. 

The “virus blocker” devices have come under fire from the Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S., which banned it from entering its ports in April. Andrew Wheeler, an EPA administrator said in a statement of the time that the agency was taking steps to ban “dishonest subjects from selling fraudulent and illicit items that do not serve to protect Americans against the coronavirus.”

Makers of a version of the device told Coda Story in May that they had already sold half a million of the products since the beginning of the pandemic. 

The World Health Organization says practicing social distancing, hand-washing, and wearing a mask are the best forms of protection against the coronavirus.

Illustration by Sofiya Voznaya

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Last week, Russian prosecutors demanded a 15-year prison sentence for Dmitriev. The case centers around naked photos Dmitriev took of his then pre-teen daughter which were seized after an anonymous tip to local police in Petrozavodsk, a city in northwestern Russia. Dmitriev says he took the photos for doctors taking care of his daughter. The photos were also the subject of a previous child pornography case against Dmitriev which was thrown out in 2018.

The announcement from the prosecution on July 7 is the latest episode in a four-year-long courtroom saga.

“The charges are distressing and needless to say, sound horrible, and I think that this is a specific strategy because the goal wasn’t to just neutralize an undesirable person,” said Irina Galkova, director of Memorial International’s museum in Moscow. Most of the court proceedings were held behind closed doors and few details can ever be released about the case, said Galkova. “Even if he is acquitted, the strategy would have accomplished its goal.”

While Dmitriev was held in pre-trial detention, a group of Kremlin-backed historians have worked to rewrite the history of one of the largest sites the historian uncovered, Sandarmokh, where 9,000 victims of Stalin’s Great Terror are buried. The new narrative casts the site as a World War II-era burial ground and dilutes Sandarmokh’s association with Stalin. “This is happening across the board,” Galkova said. “We see how convenient it is to switch over attention from the collective memory of the repressions to the Great Patriotic War [WWII].”

Head of a local branch of Memorial, an NGO focusing on political repressions, Dmitriev has uncovered and documented mass grave sites since the late 1980s, well ahead of other memorialization efforts. He is responsible for recording thousands of names of those killed during the Great Terror and his name appears in the pages of Anne Applebaum’s Pulitzer Prize winning history of the Gulag, in Masha Gessen and Misha Friedman’s 2018 book “Never Remember” and in scores of other books.

Applebaum, who met with Dmitriev while researching her book, called his arrest “appalling” and a “profound reversal” in attitudes towards Gulag history when I spoke with her earlier this year for Coda’s documentary series, Generation Gulag. “This is somebody who should be a local community hero,” she told me.

The unusual nature of the charges against Dmitriev have brought the case international attention. Russian state television channels have hounded the historian, accusing him of attempting to escape abroad and other charges.

You can watch Coda Story’s Generation Gulag series about the Kremlin’s campaign to rewrite Soviet history here.

Photo by Igor Podgorny\TASS via Getty Images

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Earlier this week, opposition politician Vladimir Milov and activist Alyona Popova filed a complaint against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the mass use of facial recognition technology during a protest in Moscow last September. The protest saw more than 20,000 people rally in support of protesters and political prisoners arrested during the lead up to local council elections. While the protest was sanctioned by the authorities, attendees were made to pass through metal detectors equipped with CCTV cameras. 

In their complaint to the ECHR, Milov and Popova stated that the mass use of facial recognition violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, including those on the right to freedom of assembly and the right to privacy.

Technology experts say the lawsuit faces a number of hurdles. “This is the first case of such a lawsuit against the facial recognition system in Moscow. But it can hardly change the big picture of both local or federal programs for the development of tracking systems, or on broad public opinion,” said Leonid Kovachich, a Moscow-based technology expert, via email. 

Moscow started trialing facial recognition in 2017. Two years later, Moscow City Hall announced that the technology had been successful in tackling crime and moved to install up to 200,000 surveillance cameras with facial recognition throughout the city. 

According to Kovachich, privacy still remains a low priority in Russian public life. “Historically Russians have not been as concerned with privacy issues as people in the West. And there has not been much awareness among the general population about surveillance. So it was not of great concern. The common opinion was: I'm a simple person, I can hardly be interesting to the intelligence services.” 

“However, as soon as people face real persecution and other difficulties associated with surveillance and facial recognition, attitudes begin to change,” added Kovachich. “In Russia, various social movements have emerged that analyze the legitimacy of such systems, develop countermeasures and even share secrets on how to cheat facial recognition systems with makeup and other means of camouflage.”

In February Coda Story followed Katrin Nenasheva, an artist and an activist in Moscow, an organizer of “Follow,” a rally which attempted to trick facial recognition technology with makeup. You can watch our video here.

Image by Gogi Kamushadze

The post Russian opposition files lawsuit against Moscow’s use of facial recognition tech appeared first on Coda Story.

The Gulf country is under a disinformation attack once again. According to a Daily Beast investigation released earlier this week, fake journalist personas published “Middle East hot takes” in op-eds for 46 different right-leaning publications, including Newsmax and Washington Examiner. Many of the articles criticized Qatar and heaped praise on the United Arab Emirates, while pushing for a tougher line on Iran and Turkey. 

The digital propaganda campaign used stolen avatars and AI-generated headshots to create fictitious authors. The avatars employed photos of real people but cropped and mirror image reversed the pictures in an attempt to thwart detection. Fake biographies, academic credentials, LinkedIn profiles, and Twitter accounts added plausibility. 

The Daily Beast investigation revealed that the network of fabricated contributors endorsed similar viewpoints in more than 90 articles: criticism of Qatar’s state-funded news outlet, Al Jazeera, a demand for stricter sanctions against Iran, and praise for the United Arab Emirates’ response to Covid-19. 

One op-ed in The Asia Times, a Hong Kong-based English language news outlet, condemned Qatar for using —  ironically enough — disinformation to paint itself as “a liberal mecca in a sea of conservative, regressive regimes.” Another opinion piece on fake news and political discourse by a fake journalist was titled, “How Qatar is using Disinformation Tactics to Attack its Rivals.” 

“These kinds of statements are created to build a narrative,” said Kiran Nazish, a Middle East analyst and professor of politics and media at Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada. “The whole point is to create leverage against a country,” she said in a phone interview. 

Qatar has been under a land, sea and air blockade since June 2017, when Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain severed diplomatic links with the gas-rich country, after years of foreign policy disagreements.

Nazish said that any propaganda campaign against Qatar strengthens the blockade and builds momentum for Saudi and Emirati foreign policy. 

“It gives adrenaline to the anti-Qatar lobby because Qatar is instrumental in foreign policy with Iran. It’s about who has regional power in the Middle East and who has economic power globally,” she said. 

Though many of the articles have been taken down and accompanying Twitter accounts deleted, the incident shows how sophisticated disinformation campaigns can go undetected. “Disinformation is the great tool that everyone is free to use,” added Nazish.

Photo by AFP via Getty Images

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The editors of Index say their independence is in “grave danger” following management changes within a news organization that is one of the last remaining critical voices of Viktor Orban’s government.

Under the guise of addressing falling advertisement revenue, Index’s board of directors moved to outsource the paper’s reporting to external businesses and dismissed editor-in-chief Szabolcs Dull from the board on June 21. The announcement plunged Index into turmoil, with its CEO stepping down on June 23, followed by the resignation of his replacement in the same week. Index continues publishing, with editor-in-chief Szabolcs Dull writing on the website, “We don’t have a CEO, we know little.”

The changes at Index, which launched in 1999, follow a pattern that has brought a number of Hungary’s once-independent media outlets under the control of the government, according to Dalma Dojcsak, a lawyer at the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union in Budapest. “Everything is presented as a tool to make Index work better and to serve its owners better,” said Dojcsak. “It’s a sophisticated tool to blur the lines of the story and to distance the whole issue from the government.” 

Several members of Index’s board have indirect ties to the government.

Index has weathered a number of dramatic shake-ups in Hungarian media, holding on to its independence as nearly 80% of the country’s media was brought under the control of the state or the ownership of friends and allies of Orban. Some of Hungary’s pro-Orban media moguls have also purchased news outlets in other parts of Europe, including the UK, Macedonia and Slovenia.

With 62% of Hungarians reporting that they are satisfied with Viktor Orban’s response to the coronavirus, the government feels it can silence any remaining critics. “I think they feel very confident now that they can manage situations like closing down Index,” said Dojcsak.

Following an ownership change back in 2018, Index created an “independence barometer” for its readers. On June 21 the dial turned from “independent” to “in danger.” 

The site also opened up a page where readers can post their support for the site. Words of support came from leading public figures and celebrities in Hungary. “Index is one of the last memories of long-standing press freedom,” wrote professor and author Vilmos Csanyi. In another post, singer-songwriter Jonas Vera said that “Index is a critical voice to me, they seek the truth, they follow it and stand up.”

Illustration by Inge Snip & Karol Bohacova

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As the value of the Lebanese pound — which is officially pegged to the U.S. dollar — collapsed, an unofficial market sprang up for people to exchange the currency at its market value. The government responded by cracking down on currency traders as well as blocking dozens of apps which tracked going rates for the Lebanese pound on the illicit market.

Such apps, however, have continued to proliferate, and blocking them is a losing battle, according to Abed Kataya, digital content manager at SMEX, a digital rights organization. The going rate for the pound, which is officially fixed at around 1,500 to the dollar, has now exceeded 8,000.

Following a negotiated end to the currency dealers’ strike, the official exchanges were reopened in early June. But this reopening did not have the intended effect on the currency rates, “because people are not buying from these dealers, because they buy from the black market, because the black market gives them a higher rate,” explained Kataya.

Meanwhile, repression of Lebanese civil society has escalated, according to Jad Shahrour of the Samir Kassir Foundation, which tracks violations against journalists and activists. Last week, a judge in southern Lebanon banned all media from interviewing U.S. ambassador Dorothy Shea for one year following comments she made criticizing Hezbollah, a political party and militant group. After his ruling sparked international outcry, the judge, Mohammed Mazeh, resigned on Tuesday.

The government has also escalated its online censorship by blocking access via 3G mobile networks to sites hosted by the platform Blogger, according to SMEX. The move follows similar censorship of the dating app Grindr.

Photo: Joseph Eid/AFP via Getty Images

The post Lebanon’s ban on currency exchange apps fails to stem economic woes appeared first on Coda Story.

According to recent reports, the African island nation is now expanding its product range to include a capsule version of Covid-Organics, and a new injectable cure. President Andry Rajoelina has said that clinical trials of the injectable solution, based on extracts of the artemisia plant, are already underway.  

On June 18, Rajoelina announced the launch of CVO +, a supposedly “curative and preventive capsule against Covid-19” made from artemisia, a plant that grows on the island, which is commonly used in antimalarial drugs.

Madagascar is also moving forward with clinical trials for an injectable remedy composed of artesunate — a derivative of artemisia — and vitamin C. 

President Rajoelina said the trials were to be supported by the scientific committee of the World Health Organization’s Madagascar branch, but the WHO has since distanced itself from the president’s claims about the drug. 

The trials are being conducted at a site specifically developed and funded by the Malagasy state.

Medical experts have criticized the president’s latest announcement. “It’s a hoax, don’t fall for it,” said Nour Sharara, a global health consultant at Meedan, an international organization working to improve digital literacy. “The fact that it’s a clinical trial does not signal any efficacy,” she said, pointing out that most clinical trials fail.

“There’s a conflict of interest right away,” Sharara continued, in a Zoom interview. “My worry is the precedent this sets: that you can have a president somewhere who proclaims that he has the cure to a disease, and that we bypass regular trials, and independent and fair assessment of data that we usually see in science.”

The Malagasy trial for the supposed injectable cure is already in its second phase, a rapid progression for a trial that was registered on May 29. According to Sharara, most clinical trials take several months or years to move through the first two phases.  

“People want answers and they want answers now, and the process gets rushed,” said Sharara. “We’re not letting science speak.”

Illustration by John McCann for Mail and Guardian

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Beard explained how the app, named NHS Covid-19, was initially met with enthusiasm by residents and that a reported 65% downloaded it. 

However, NHS Covid-19 — which used Bluetooth technology to collect data from phones — raised concerns among privacy advocates and experts, who said it did not allow users enough control over how their data was shared and stored. 

The app used a so-called centralized approach, that enabled the collection of information in a central database, to which law enforcement and intelligence agencies could potentially gain access. 

According to Gus Hosein, executive director at Privacy International, which has been monitoring coronavirus tracking apps, there is no information as to whether data was being stored centrally or what was being done with it.

“When the government embarked on their app, the app was necessary. The government was failing at containment, was failing at testing, and had no tracing initiatives. So the app was being asked to do the impossible: track our interactions that we don't remember, in the absence of a real contact tracing process; help us identify to others if we feel unwell, in the absence of a test; and require others to isolate in the absence of government leadership on quarantining. No app could do all of this,” said Hosein, via email.

After over a month on trial and $13.5m in costs, the UK government decided to withdraw the app. One of the reasons cited was the app’s poor performance with iPhones, owing to incompatibility with Apple’s iOS operating system. 

Now, the UK government has decided to develop a new app that could be more compatible with systems designed by Apple and Google. The new app is to run with a so-called decentralized approach, which is considered to be less invasive to privacy, allowing officials less access to user data. 

Coda Story has covered how Covid-19 apps have invoked privacy concerns in other European countries such as Italy and Germany, both of which have switched to decentralized apps after initially following a centralized model, similar to that used by NHS Covid-19. Our reporters have also looked into the implications of tracking apps in Pakistan and India.

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