18 ms·

Romania orders investigative journalists to disclose sources under GDPR

723 points by treewhistle 8y ago

elliekelly 8y ago
This is particularly concerning given that GDPR specifically requires member states, in enforcing GDPR, allow exceptions for journalism and documents/data "in the public interest." Considering the funds at the center of these Facebook posts went missing from EU coffers its clear the information falls squarely within both exemptions. At least it's a civil case. The fines for non-compliance with the request will surely add up quickly but I suspect this will make its way through the court system and reach a just conclusion.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > its clear the information falls squarely within both exemptions This is the problem with GDPR. Each member state decides what's clear and what's not. It may be appealable. But that's expensive, time- and attention-consuming and risky. We need strong privacy regulation. One downside to a fragmented complain-investigate-fine regulatory structure (as opposed to strict liability or complain-mediate-investigate structures) is that these things happen, and when they happen they do so decisively.
  - pennaMan 8y ago
    All the regulation in the world won't do any good against a highly corrupt government like the one Romania is sadly facing at the moment.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > All the regulation in the world won't do any good against a highly corrupt government It doesn't help to add arrows to their quiver. GDPR is a good law when a government can be trusted. It throws petrol on the fire in over-reaching states.
      - torstenvl 8y ago
        A state that has something like the GDPR is, by that very fact, overreaching.
        overkalix 8y ago
        "It's OK though, government X will only use GDPR for good and they will go easy on small companies and individuals infringing it". Literally the argument you would eventually see at the end of threads about GDPR. I don't know how many times I've said this, but it amazes me that people can feel so identified and represented by nation-state politics that they are so willing to trust their government.
        vertex-four 8y ago
        I don't trust the companies that the GDPR is targeting either - who are more involved in my life on a day-to-day basis and can have as much or more effect on it, short of literally putting me in a cell. Information is power, and it's generally private companies wielding it. We exist in a society where companies and Government and the people all continually back each other up in oppressing people. Fact of the matter is, that the GDPR is a pile of shit (it's basically an argument that only the Government should be allowed to amass and weaponise information, where I'd argue that nobody should be allowed to), but so is the mass centralisation of information in the hands of large, powerful entities that it's intended to target. And one would be entirely unnecessary and unwarranted without the other.
        simias 8y ago
        I don't feel "identified and represented by nation-state politics", whatever that means. But I do trust my democratically elected government to some extent. At least, I trust it more that the companies GDPR is supposed to protect me from. And you're building a strawman with GDPR supporters, I don't think anybody said that nobody would ever try to abuse it. The GDPR has explicit provisions protecting journalists. It remains to be seen how this particular case pans out and if they truly manage to get the journalists to expose their source (or get heavily fined). If the Romanian authorities really manages to get this through and the rest of the Eurogroup doesn't react then yeah, that's quite worrying. Also note that it's not like without the GDPR those journalists would be able to work peacefully anyway: >Dragnea invoked the European data protection legislation last year when he threatened RISE Project with a lawsuit after journalists published stories on his connections to Tel Drum SA executives and other Romanian business people indicted for corruption and fraud. >The president of the PSD never sued but soon after these threats were made, the Romanian Anti-Fraud Authority (ANAF) raided RISE Project’s offices, saying they suspected the organization of fraud. The investigation carried out by ANAF never uncovered any such fraud. >RISE Project discovered that the initial complaint ANAF used to target RISE was a forgery filed by a non-existent person, with a non-existent physical address who falsely claimed that she worked as an accountant at the media house. Due process is not really the keyword here from what I understand from this article. Something tells me that if it wasn't about the GDPR it would be something else.
    - TomMckenny 8y ago
      It's the fashion to twist laws to cover unconscionable behavior it seems. I'm only surprised Orban or Morawiecki didn't think of it first. But it's no surprise when the press is called "the enemy of the people"
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Angostura 8y ago
    > This is the problem with GDPR. Each member state decides what's clear and what's not. That's no so much a problem with GDPR as nation states.
    - reitanqild 8y ago
      Nation states has problems. But I can't think of a better alternative: - one world government? All the problems of nation states and then some. Plus nowhere to seek refuge. It's not like a government more powerful than all todays governments would magically become less corrupted. - no government? Has it's own problems as well. What we have today is a mess but IMO it's the price we have to pay to avoid the worst dictatorship imaginable on this earth or going back to the dark ages.
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      The alternative is centralization of government which changes nothing except ensures that once corrupted its scale would affect what, at scale, could even be the entire world. It also gives bad actors a single target to focus all their energy (and influence) on. In my opinion the solution is to go in the opposite direction. I think the 'closer' to the people, both figuratively and literally, a government is, the more they tend to be held accountable. Romania's revolution against Ceausescu was a very clear, and quite literal, illustration of this. As an aside, "nation state" is not a fancy way of saying country. It has a specific meaning denoting a mostly ethnically homogeneous nation. E.g. Belgium is most certainly not a nation state.
      - azernik 8y ago
        Not necessarily ethnically homogeneous; just one that explicitly endorses the ethnic nationalism of the dominant group. For example, Slovakia, Israel, and Lithuania all have substantial ethnic minorities (respectively Hungarian, Arab, and Russian) with varying degrees of protection for minority groups, yet are very much nation-states.
    - BurningFrog 8y ago
      > That's no so much a problem with GDPR as nation states. Out of GDPR and nation states, only one can be abolished.
  - M2Ys4U 8y ago
    >This is the problem with GDPR. Each member state decides what's clear and what's not. That was a big problem with the Data Protection Directive (which the GDPR replaced). But now the European Data Protection Board[0] (basically, the supervisory authorities from the member states and EEA member states, plus the European Data Protection Supervisor) can make sure that each supervisory authority is - approximately - following the same standards. Each case gets filed in a common system by the lead authority investigating it and cases gets discussed between the Board members. [0] https://edpb.europa.eu/ https://edpb.europa.eu/
- Thiez 8y ago
  I wonder which part of the GDPR they are using to demand sources. I have read the thing a couple of months ago and as I recall the thing is mostly about not sharing personal information without consent, does anyone else recall parts that grant governments new rights to demand the disclosure of personal information?
  - treewhistle 8y ago
    You can read an English translation of the demand letter here: https://www.occrp.org/en/16-other/other-articles/8876-english-translation-of-the-letter-from-the-romanian-data-protection-authority-to-rise-project https://www.occrp.org/en/16-other/other-articles/8876-englis...
    - e12e 8y ago
      Thanks for that. Some of those points are actually reasonable, and a journalist should be comfortably within rights to respond that sources need to be kept secret, and comment why/how/why not subjects were alerted to the publication (perhaps given a chance to comment). Hopefully this'll go to court and set a precedent that more in line with the spirit of the gdpr.
      - krastanov 8y ago
        I am not quite certain how much a precedent matters here. Of the western world we have the US, UK, and Canada that employ common law where precedent really matters. In most of the EU the system of civil law is used, where the judiciary is expected to be much more literal and to not perform much interpretation or reference to previous interpretations.
        jacobush 8y ago
        Aaaand then we have the Scandinavian systems which are somehow both.
        jkaplowitz 8y ago
        Civil law has a concept similar to the common law world's respect for prior judicial rulings, but weaker. It's called jurisprudence constante (a French phrase). The impact of a single ruling on future rulings is not huge, but a series of rulings all in accord will be treated as strongly persuasive. It's still secondary to the statute and not 100% binding, but nevertheless it is a real part of the system. Also, both the US and Canada have a civil law jurisdiction: Louisiana and Quebec, respectively. Both do make some use of common law as well, but private law (governing relations between non-state parties) is even now predominantly civil law in both places. If the original actors in this case were non-state parties, I expect that civil law would be applicable to a hypothetical Quebec version of this dispute. In Louisiana, same thing if the relevant law was at the state level rather than federal. (In Quebec, even federal laws are interpreted using civil law principles when covering private law topics.)
- tzs 8y ago
  > This is particularly concerning given that GDPR specifically requires member states, in enforcing GDPR, allow exceptions for journalism and documents/data "in the public interest." That may not apply, because of the clever (evil too, but also clever) way they are doing this. If they were asking as data subjects where the data came from (which data subjects have a right to under Article 15 1(g)), then journalism and public interest exceptions should apply. But that's not what they are doing. They aren't coming in as data subjects asking about the data held on them. They are coming in as an Article 51 supervisory authority in charge monitoring GDPR in their country. They are claiming to be doing the tasks Article 57 assigns to the supervisory authority, and exercising the powers Article 58 gives them for that. Presumably, someone who the journalists wrote about alleged that the journalists were not complying with GDPR in how they obtained and used the data. And so now the supervisory authority is investigating that. Article 58 gives them power "to obtain, from the controller and the processor, access to all personal data and to all information necessary for the performance of its tasks". They can probably argue that in order to decide if a journalism or public interest exception applies, they have to know where the data came from and how it was obtained. Assuming things are as corrupt as people have claimed, I'd expect they will go in, and if they obtain the information on the sources, they will rule that a journalism or public interest exception applies, and dismiss whatever sham GDPR complaint they had someone file to set this off.
  - hyperpape 8y ago
    Your post makes it sound as if, no matter how corrupt this is, their demand is within the letter of the law. If so, that is a pretty nasty unintended consequence.
    - ccnafr 8y ago
      That's exactly what he's saying.
    - celticninja 8y ago
      Usual thing with these laws, within the letter of the law but not within the spirit of it.
ilikechairs 8y ago
you can't pass regulations requiring governments to protect personal data then get mad when a government goes to protect personal data. Who that data is about, whether a high-profile politician or an average joe, doesn't matter. Either everyone is protected from third parties gathering data on them, or nobody is. Can't have it both ways.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Can't have it both ways Yes one can. One can simply exempt the law's application to certain people, e.g. the fourth estate. GDPR does that. The problem, here, is the government is judge, jury and executioner.
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    Well, technically, the state is always judge, jury and executioner. These functions may devolve to different parts of the state but they are always part of the state. Which is to say that any law that grants journalists more freedom of expression than the average person is going to run up against the problem of state then aiming to define journalists as "the people we like". It's like current employment, where it's illegal to fire someone on the grounds of race but legal to fire them "for no reason at all". That situation can protect people but it's clearly rather weak.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > technically, the state is always judge, jury and executioner Pardon me, I meant to say "prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner." In jury trials, the jury is the jury. Not the government. And in American civil cases, the prosecutor is a private citizen's attorneys. Not the state. GDPR's structure is highly state-reliant. It's analogous to securities regulation in the United States. Any complaint triggers an investigation by the state, with the state able to bring and decide on charges and fines. If you trust your government, this isn't a big deal. If you don't trust your government, it is horrific.
ezoe 8y ago
Seriously, If you want to be a journalist reporting about own government corruption. Storing the data inside the local country is the worst option. Why nobody thought about that?
- macintux 8y ago
  I'm also a bit confused by the use of a Facebook post to disseminate this information.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    Journalist heroes must be convicted, brave and honest, but they do not need to be OPSEC experts. People who spend all day reading about PGP, and people who decide to risk retaliation by publicizing documents that have come to them, are both minority groups that rarely overlap (because then you'd have to have two unlikely traits, which is a lot less likely than having one.)
    - tokai 8y ago
      >but they do not need to be OPSEC experts This is evidently wrong.
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        They might need to be OPSEC experts if they want to publish two articles, but to publish one they do not. I'm pointing out that civic motivation and technical knowledge aren't correlated.
    - kd5bjo 8y ago
      Language sidebar: You might want to alter your word choice a bit. As an American, “must be convicted” reads as “must be found guilty in court”, which I’m pretty sure isn’t what you meant. Even changing the order to “brave, convicted and honest” would help — putting the ambiguous item in the middle of the list helps to clarify which meaning you intended.
- 8y ago
batrat 8y ago
They are one of the best journalists in Romania, of course they want to shut it down. If this goes their way we are doomed not only because they shut down Rise Project but the entire media.
- petre 8y ago
  The entire non-afilliated and non-partisan media. Or what you'd otherwise call the free press. The rest it's just propaganda machines in the hands of special interests.
georgeburdell 8y ago
Not sure if I understand. How is a data privacy law being used to get an organization to reveal its sources? The article mentions something about the government needing to know how data were stored, but that’s all I could see that addressed this question. Edit: Comments filled me in. The regulation seems to relate in part to people having the right to know who is collecting what data on them.
- pennaMan 8y ago
  The current government operates more like Erdogan or Putin than an EU country. The same government appeals to "human rights regulations of the EU" to justify passing laws that save several heads of government from ongoing corruption trials.
- buboard 8y ago
  They 're probably relying on "data access requests", which is their right under GDPR.
- elliekelly 8y ago
  The source presumably had the information lawfully and, under GDPR, owed a duty to the subject of the information to (i) protect it from disclosure, and (ii) notify the subject of the information in the event of a breach or unlawful disclosure. However, GDPR does not extend that duty to protect/disclose when the data in question is being used for journalistic purposes. I suspect the corrupt government is just as eager to find the source of their leak as they are to bully these journalists into silence. This is what the demand letter requests[1]: - The purpose and legal basis of publishing on the Internet (Facebook) of personal data, at the adress https://www.facebook.com/notes/rise-project/teleormanleaks/1937024593056150; https://www.facebook.com/notes/rise-project/teleormanleaks/1... - The date/period of time when the said personal data was published on your Facebook account; - The source from where the personal data published on Facebook was obtained; - The support (electronic and/or physical) where you stored the documents/images published on Facebook; - If the mobile storage devices (tablet, HDD, memory stick) were/are password protected or encrypted; - If you have other information/documents containing personal data of the said people; - If the personal data or documents that contain personal data of the said people were revealed in other circumstances - with the specification of these circumstances; - The way in which you informed the said people, in conformity with Art. 13-14 of GDPR. [1] https://www.occrp.org/en/16-other/other-articles/8876-english-translation-of-the-letter-from-the-romanian-data-protection-authority-to-rise-project https://www.occrp.org/en/16-other/other-articles/8876-englis... edit: formatting
anticensor 8y ago
I can assure this will not happen in Bulgaria and in Turkey (which is not an EU member but has a similar data protection law), because disclosed sources might reveal possible sources and uncover state corruption, to the point of invalidating a whole election.
- buboard 8y ago
  turkey is not in the EU
  - anticensor 8y ago
    Turkey is not in the EU, but it has a similar enough data protection law (KVKK), and unlike GDPR, this also covers the government operators (they cannot make 'we have different interests' excuse here); and unlike former EU DPD, we have strict data protection officer requirements (actually even stricter than GDPR by having a central track record of DPOs).
    - buboard 8y ago
      sure but the kicker here is that romania's government is using the EU as an appeal to "higher power" to justify its actions, while Erdogan can't do that.
orbitingpluto 8y ago
Well this was certainly an interesting link form the same page: https://www.occrp.org/en/28-ccwatch/cc-watch-indepth/8813-a-scandal-a-murder-and-a-mystery-in-bulgaria https://www.occrp.org/en/28-ccwatch/cc-watch-indepth/8813-a-... "But the victim of the brutal rape and murder was Bulgarian television journalist Viktoria Marinova — and her last broadcast was about the theft of hundreds of millions of euros from European Union-funded programs in her country. Even those who had never heard of the so-called “GP scandal” certainly know about it now. In the program, which aired just six days before she was killed, Marinova interviewed reporters from OCCRP’s Bulgarian partner, Bivol and its Romanian partner, the RISE Project."
- tin7in 8y ago
  This murder was most certainly not related to that report. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/viktoria-marinova-murder-rape-bulgaria-man-kill-journalist-stade-severin-krassimirov-a8592051.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/viktoria-mar...
  - Para2016 8y ago
    The 21 year old guy said he doesn't remember raping, robbing, or murdering her because he "blacked out" but he says he regrets it? You believe that? That means he doesn't have to supply a single detail of how the rape and murder even happened. And the DNA evidence? Trivial to link to somebody in a corrupt system. If he's going to confess he needs to provide details, like if she was sodomized, where he hit her, etc. Plus what drugs was he on? Either he could still test positive or they can hair test him.
  - orbitingpluto 8y ago
    Sorry, my bad for not specifying that. Deaths of journalists are one of those things to always note. Romania =/= Bulgaria
mariusmg 8y ago
Muie PSD. Crooked, corrupted political party trying to escape from a massive corruption scandal using GDPR. Shameful.
- RealityVoid 8y ago
  What is even more concerning is the fact that they still have so many supporters when they are so obviously up to their neck in corruption. Muie PSD.
- humanfromearth 8y ago
  +1, now go ahead and donate here: https://www.riseproject.ro/donatii/ https://www.riseproject.ro/donatii/
- petre 8y ago
  Swearing and shaming isn't going to solve anything because these people have no shame. They're just going to use your swearing against you and call you hooligans on national TV, like they did with the people beaten up by the miners in ’91. If you are fed up with mainstream parties, support or join any of the resistance movements.
- kunkurus 8y ago
  English version: https://www.riseproject.ro/investigation/ https://www.riseproject.ro/investigation/
- cristiantincu 8y ago
  Muie PSD!
ElBarto 8y ago
They are trying it on. The journalists should not cave.
- RealityVoid 8y ago
  Rise officially said they will not cave. Rise Project has exceptional investigative journalism and are very serious about their job.
  - ElBarto 8y ago
    Good to hear.
exabrial 8y ago
Predictable outcome from an over-reaching law :/ Definitely some good parts to it, but it went way beyond what it needed to. And I'm tired of clicking cookie popups. I literally do not care.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  s/law/government/. You do realize that corrupt governments abusing good laws is daily life in Romania? I mean, you're in the US, so you should definitely know what that's like.
  - dominotw 8y ago
    > you're in the US, so you should definitely know what that's like. Are you referring to immigration laws not being enforced in US? I think its much more complex that 'corrupt governments'.
    - scrollaway 8y ago
      Not sure where you got "immigration laws" from my post.
      - dominotw 8y ago
        it was guess.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    In USA, "good" laws are a tiny minority of the total. How could it be otherwise? We have thousands of scoundrels working all day long every day writing more of them.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    > I mean, you're in the US, so you should definitely know what that's like. Whataboutism aside, most definitely, hence the opposition to such "good" laws in the first place. The perspective of taking the good-with-the-bad status quo compared to the alternatives is rooted in rational precedence.
throw2016 8y ago
It's strange to see the Romanian government try to use the GPDR to harass journalists. Governments have become increasingly shameless about going after the press so no cover is required. The UK government [1] has done this to multiple journalists including the Guardian, BBC [2], Greenwald's partner famously among others under the 'terrorism act'. The US govt [3] is liberally using subpoenas, court processes and threatening new laws [4] to force journalists to give up sources. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/14/government-terrorism-journalists-investigatory-powers-bill-snooper-charter https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/14/government-ter... [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-use-terror-powers-to-seize-bbc-newsnight-journalists-laptop-a6712636.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-use-terro... [3] https://pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/increasing-number-journalists-have-recently-faced-subpoenas/ https://pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/increasing-number-journa... [4] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-leaks-jeff-sessions-media-give-up-sources-a7877421.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... [5] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/us/james-risen-faces-jail-time-for-refusing-to-identify-a-confidential-source.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/us/james-risen-faces-jail... [6] https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/press_subpoena_source_obama.php https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/press_subpoena_sour...
logfromblammo 8y ago
Did someone forget to stake Ceaushescu's body and pin it down with a big rock? Is all the old repression and corruption coming back, now that the latest leaders are too young to remember what had to be done to reduce it, just a little bit?
- petre 8y ago
  It isn't coming back, it was there all along, and they're not leaders, they are members of one or several organised crime syndicates disguised as political parties.
itsreallyme 8y ago
Every time new, complicated laws are passed they go through 4 steps: 1. It’s really great, trust us 2. Lemmings approve 3. Everyone is screwed 4. Lemmings talk about it critically and pretend that they understand exactly what went wrong
- mgbmtl 8y ago
  Nice way to kill a conversation and any hope of building something better. Romania's institutions are corrupt and dysfunctional, there isn't much more to say than that. It would be nice for the EU to lean in, but it's unlikely to do so, given the rise of anti-EU populism. Those journalists need help.
  - itsreallyme 8y ago
    Right... it’s not that power corrupts; it’s that power is good and corruption is just something that coincidentally keeps popping up everywhere where there is power. Also, what conversation? The one-sided echo-chamber where dissenting opinions are immediately met with hostility and censorship?
    - trophycase 8y ago
      Power doesn't corrupt. It's generally just narcissists and egotists who want power the most.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  Anyone who disagrees with you and supports GDPR is a lemming? > Lemmings talk about it critically ... The only people I see blaming GDPR are GDPR critics. And, curiously, they all are repeating each other's arguments sort of like a herd of ...
  - itsreallyme 8y ago
    I meant lemmings talking about the situation critically, but I also meant the second definition of critical.
raquo 8y ago
Where are all the people who were saying GDPR is fine to be underspecified because European governments are benevolent and will choose to be good even when they don't have to?
- icebraining 8y ago
  I don't see how this is a problem of underspecification.
  - raquo 8y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18418610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18418610
  - mtarnovan 8y ago
    It is a problem with under-specification, because GDPR is supposed to be just a guiding framework and each government should implement its own compatible laws. I also was afraid the Romanian government (and other autocratic governments) will do a poor job translating the GDPR into national law.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      That's not true; the GDPR is not a Directive, but a Regulation, meaning the actual text applies directly, it's not transposed by the national legislators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_(European_Union) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_(European_Union)
      - mtarnovan 8y ago
        That's correct, however the GDPR contains some clauses allowing each state to pass national laws to supplement it, and I expect most states will.
- blub 8y ago
  No law can be beneficial if the individuals and institutions applying it are corrupt and abusive. In theory the Soviet Union and other communist governments had lots of laws outlining a fair and equal treatment of citizens, in practice they were disappearing people.
noarchy 8y ago
Is it really a revelation that governments cannot be trusted any more than corporations with our data? Their potential for abuse is even worse: you cannot opt-out of using government like you can a Facebook or a Google.
- ainiriand 8y ago
  At least you can choose the government...
nickpp 8y ago
This is exactly what critics of GDPR feared will happen. Meanwhile, the pro-GDPR hysteria went on until the inevitable happened. But hey, at least now every tiny blog will dump a huge pop up every time I visit telling me how important is my "privacy" to them.
- blub 8y ago
  Oh, which critics were worried about journalists? I've read most if not all the GDPR topics on HN and all the GDPR critics I've read were basicslly worried about ad-funded businesses or an abstract concept of freedom from government control - as in let the market decide. So it's far fetched to now claim that everyone was worried about journalism. Furthermore, this is clearly political power abuse. Apparently the same organisation was raided for a "fraud" investigation. The problem's the corrupt government, not the privacy law.
  - nickpp 8y ago
    That "abstract concept" - well this is how it gets implemented in the real world. A corrupt government and an overreaching regulation (look ma, two oxymorons in a single phrase!) and this is the price you pay for... for what? What did you actually gain from gdpr?
    - blub 8y ago
      I believe this same government was in the news for essentially making bribes legal, as long as they were under a specific amount... and yet you think it's the GDPR of all things that enables their abuse? The GDPR which mandates exceptions for journalism, by the way.
      - nickpp 8y ago
        No, GDPR also enables this abuse. Because GDPR was the criticized one, not that govt. Criticized for enabling this, for chilling effects on European startups, for solidifying the monopoly of huge web behemoths like Facebook and google, and for generally creating a shitty everyday browsing excperience. All for the absolutely ZERO benefits GDPR brought so far...
resters 8y ago
For some reason HN turned against WikiLeaks over the past few years, but this kind of thing is why Wikileaks is a good idea. Governments should not have the option of forcing journalists to do anything.
- ohashi 8y ago
  For some reason, reason being it turned into a Russian propaganda outlet.
  - Tomte 8y ago
    And disseminating anti-semitic propaganda on their Twitter account.
    - resters 8y ago
      It's not clear who posted that and it's a small blip in the overall stellar reputation of WL's journalism.
  - resters 8y ago
    Still not seeing any evidence for this. WL would surely publish any high quality leaked info on Russia or on any US politicians regardless of party or stance on Russia.
- pudo 8y ago
  I’d describe it the opposite way. The lesson learned from Wikileaks was two-fold: use digital tools well, but be aware there’s always a physical pressure point. Wikileaks became more whacky after JA was tethered to an embassy. Similarly, in this case, the potential problem is fines for the reporters working with the material, not the chance that it could disappear.
  - resters 8y ago
    Most journalistic outfits would have completely folded long before they reached the level of pressure that Assange has been dealing with for years now. That's the point... when journalists upset governments, ugly things happen. The last person we should be blaming is Assange!
graphememes 8y ago
It's almost like there were a lot of people warning about legal ramifications of GDPR and nobody listened. Same thing with the meme law
i_phish_cats 8y ago
I work in email security and the WHOIS information we relied on to find out domains bulk-registered by spammers/phishers has essentially gone dark because of GDPR.
ddmma 8y ago
Fighting EU with their own tools such as GDPR. You should know also that these guys from romanian government been involved so much with changing laws and finding ways to avoid it until they become experts. On one hand they give social benefits and impression that people have sallary growth in order for government members to stay in power. Then they make their deals and cover their traces thru laws and other ‘justice system’. Also be aware also on the multisystem universe called ‘parallel state’.. that guy Dragnea, dosen’t have any limits!
kasey_junk 8y ago
Well that didn’t take long.
temporallobe 8y ago
Hey Europe, that’s bot how journalism works. Without the basic protections of journalists, you don’t have journalism, you have state-controlled propganda.
- hanspeter 8y ago
  Please don't equate Romania with the rest of Europe. If this story holds truth there will soon be talk in the remaining Europe to show Romania the door out of EU. You should also know that many countries in Europe has less corruption than USA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
  - mtarnovan 8y ago
    > If this story holds truth there will soon be talk in the remaining Europe to show Romania the door out of EU Are you serious? That's the last thing the EU wants. Strictly speaking it's not even possible (legally) to force a state to leave the EU.
    - hanspeter 8y ago
      I did not say EU. I said Europe. The behaviour from Romainian politicians is grossly unacceptable and inconceivable in most European nations. National politicians throughout Europe will talk about a EU without "bad apples" as they have in many other cases.
      - mtarnovan 8y ago
        > to show Romania the door out of EU > I did not say EU Really? Also, you want to punish a whole country for some corrupt politicians?
shaki-dora 8y ago
Because I have frequently seen conspiracy theories regarding George Soros even on HN, I want to take this opportunity to point out that the organisation reporting this is sponsored by him, via his Open Society Foundation. It's also fairly representative of their projects. In the way that, having been marginally involved with some of the work they do in Eastern Europe, I went looking for information on their sponsors with the specific expectation of finding the OSF among them.
- chimen 8y ago
  Your comment adds nothing to this discussion. Soros was NOT mentioned in this post or thread.
mattio 8y ago
If a government is doing this, it doesn't belong in the EU at all. edit: the 'subjects' of the government however do need them in the EU, so hopefully the EU can protect those citizens against their own government?
- vixen99 8y ago
  Turkey?
anonytrary 8y ago
Wouldn't this just incentivize people to stop sharing information?
justinclift 8y ago
The url should probably have the embedded tracking link removed. "?fbclid=IwAR3oyyn-S4AchYYnsQlw_jZASnHclQxLPwS66IsgF19W73WjtFXYU-FhuYM"

723 points by treewhistle 8y ago

This is particularly concerning given that GDPR specifically requires member states, in enforcing GDPR, allow exceptions for journalism and documents/data "in the public interest." Considering the funds at the center of these Facebook posts went missing from EU coffers its clear the information falls squarely within both exemptions. At least it's a civil case. The fines for non-compliance with the request will surely add up quickly but I suspect this will make its way through the court system and reach a just conclusion.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> its clear the information falls squarely within both exemptions This is the problem with GDPR. Each member state decides what's clear and what's not. It may be appealable. But that's expensive, time- and attention-consuming and risky. We need strong privacy regulation. One downside to a fragmented complain-investigate-fine regulatory structure (as opposed to strict liability or complain-mediate-investigate structures) is that these things happen, and when they happen they do so decisively.
- pennaMan 8y ago
  All the regulation in the world won't do any good against a highly corrupt government like the one Romania is sadly facing at the moment.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > All the regulation in the world won't do any good against a highly corrupt government It doesn't help to add arrows to their quiver. GDPR is a good law when a government can be trusted. It throws petrol on the fire in over-reaching states.
    - torstenvl 8y ago
      A state that has something like the GDPR is, by that very fact, overreaching.
      - overkalix 8y ago
        "It's OK though, government X will only use GDPR for good and they will go easy on small companies and individuals infringing it". Literally the argument you would eventually see at the end of threads about GDPR. I don't know how many times I've said this, but it amazes me that people can feel so identified and represented by nation-state politics that they are so willing to trust their government.
        vertex-four 8y ago
        I don't trust the companies that the GDPR is targeting either - who are more involved in my life on a day-to-day basis and can have as much or more effect on it, short of literally putting me in a cell. Information is power, and it's generally private companies wielding it. We exist in a society where companies and Government and the people all continually back each other up in oppressing people. Fact of the matter is, that the GDPR is a pile of shit (it's basically an argument that only the Government should be allowed to amass and weaponise information, where I'd argue that nobody should be allowed to), but so is the mass centralisation of information in the hands of large, powerful entities that it's intended to target. And one would be entirely unnecessary and unwarranted without the other.
        simias 8y ago
        I don't feel "identified and represented by nation-state politics", whatever that means. But I do trust my democratically elected government to some extent. At least, I trust it more that the companies GDPR is supposed to protect me from. And you're building a strawman with GDPR supporters, I don't think anybody said that nobody would ever try to abuse it. The GDPR has explicit provisions protecting journalists. It remains to be seen how this particular case pans out and if they truly manage to get the journalists to expose their source (or get heavily fined). If the Romanian authorities really manages to get this through and the rest of the Eurogroup doesn't react then yeah, that's quite worrying. Also note that it's not like without the GDPR those journalists would be able to work peacefully anyway: >Dragnea invoked the European data protection legislation last year when he threatened RISE Project with a lawsuit after journalists published stories on his connections to Tel Drum SA executives and other Romanian business people indicted for corruption and fraud. >The president of the PSD never sued but soon after these threats were made, the Romanian Anti-Fraud Authority (ANAF) raided RISE Project’s offices, saying they suspected the organization of fraud. The investigation carried out by ANAF never uncovered any such fraud. >RISE Project discovered that the initial complaint ANAF used to target RISE was a forgery filed by a non-existent person, with a non-existent physical address who falsely claimed that she worked as an accountant at the media house. Due process is not really the keyword here from what I understand from this article. Something tells me that if it wasn't about the GDPR it would be something else.
  - TomMckenny 8y ago
    It's the fashion to twist laws to cover unconscionable behavior it seems. I'm only surprised Orban or Morawiecki didn't think of it first. But it's no surprise when the press is called "the enemy of the people"
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Angostura 8y ago
  > This is the problem with GDPR. Each member state decides what's clear and what's not. That's no so much a problem with GDPR as nation states.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    Nation states has problems. But I can't think of a better alternative: - one world government? All the problems of nation states and then some. Plus nowhere to seek refuge. It's not like a government more powerful than all todays governments would magically become less corrupted. - no government? Has it's own problems as well. What we have today is a mess but IMO it's the price we have to pay to avoid the worst dictatorship imaginable on this earth or going back to the dark ages.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    The alternative is centralization of government which changes nothing except ensures that once corrupted its scale would affect what, at scale, could even be the entire world. It also gives bad actors a single target to focus all their energy (and influence) on. In my opinion the solution is to go in the opposite direction. I think the 'closer' to the people, both figuratively and literally, a government is, the more they tend to be held accountable. Romania's revolution against Ceausescu was a very clear, and quite literal, illustration of this. As an aside, "nation state" is not a fancy way of saying country. It has a specific meaning denoting a mostly ethnically homogeneous nation. E.g. Belgium is most certainly not a nation state.
    - azernik 8y ago
      Not necessarily ethnically homogeneous; just one that explicitly endorses the ethnic nationalism of the dominant group. For example, Slovakia, Israel, and Lithuania all have substantial ethnic minorities (respectively Hungarian, Arab, and Russian) with varying degrees of protection for minority groups, yet are very much nation-states.
  - BurningFrog 8y ago
    > That's no so much a problem with GDPR as nation states. Out of GDPR and nation states, only one can be abolished.
- M2Ys4U 8y ago
  >This is the problem with GDPR. Each member state decides what's clear and what's not. That was a big problem with the Data Protection Directive (which the GDPR replaced). But now the European Data Protection Board[0] (basically, the supervisory authorities from the member states and EEA member states, plus the European Data Protection Supervisor) can make sure that each supervisory authority is - approximately - following the same standards. Each case gets filed in a common system by the lead authority investigating it and cases gets discussed between the Board members. [0] https://edpb.europa.eu/ https://edpb.europa.eu/
Thiez 8y ago
I wonder which part of the GDPR they are using to demand sources. I have read the thing a couple of months ago and as I recall the thing is mostly about not sharing personal information without consent, does anyone else recall parts that grant governments new rights to demand the disclosure of personal information?
- treewhistle 8y ago
  You can read an English translation of the demand letter here: https://www.occrp.org/en/16-other/other-articles/8876-english-translation-of-the-letter-from-the-romanian-data-protection-authority-to-rise-project https://www.occrp.org/en/16-other/other-articles/8876-englis...
  - e12e 8y ago
    Thanks for that. Some of those points are actually reasonable, and a journalist should be comfortably within rights to respond that sources need to be kept secret, and comment why/how/why not subjects were alerted to the publication (perhaps given a chance to comment). Hopefully this'll go to court and set a precedent that more in line with the spirit of the gdpr.
    - krastanov 8y ago
      I am not quite certain how much a precedent matters here. Of the western world we have the US, UK, and Canada that employ common law where precedent really matters. In most of the EU the system of civil law is used, where the judiciary is expected to be much more literal and to not perform much interpretation or reference to previous interpretations.
      - jacobush 8y ago
        Aaaand then we have the Scandinavian systems which are somehow both.
      - jkaplowitz 8y ago
        Civil law has a concept similar to the common law world's respect for prior judicial rulings, but weaker. It's called jurisprudence constante (a French phrase). The impact of a single ruling on future rulings is not huge, but a series of rulings all in accord will be treated as strongly persuasive. It's still secondary to the statute and not 100% binding, but nevertheless it is a real part of the system. Also, both the US and Canada have a civil law jurisdiction: Louisiana and Quebec, respectively. Both do make some use of common law as well, but private law (governing relations between non-state parties) is even now predominantly civil law in both places. If the original actors in this case were non-state parties, I expect that civil law would be applicable to a hypothetical Quebec version of this dispute. In Louisiana, same thing if the relevant law was at the state level rather than federal. (In Quebec, even federal laws are interpreted using civil law principles when covering private law topics.)
tzs 8y ago
> This is particularly concerning given that GDPR specifically requires member states, in enforcing GDPR, allow exceptions for journalism and documents/data "in the public interest." That may not apply, because of the clever (evil too, but also clever) way they are doing this. If they were asking as data subjects where the data came from (which data subjects have a right to under Article 15 1(g)), then journalism and public interest exceptions should apply. But that's not what they are doing. They aren't coming in as data subjects asking about the data held on them. They are coming in as an Article 51 supervisory authority in charge monitoring GDPR in their country. They are claiming to be doing the tasks Article 57 assigns to the supervisory authority, and exercising the powers Article 58 gives them for that. Presumably, someone who the journalists wrote about alleged that the journalists were not complying with GDPR in how they obtained and used the data. And so now the supervisory authority is investigating that. Article 58 gives them power "to obtain, from the controller and the processor, access to all personal data and to all information necessary for the performance of its tasks". They can probably argue that in order to decide if a journalism or public interest exception applies, they have to know where the data came from and how it was obtained. Assuming things are as corrupt as people have claimed, I'd expect they will go in, and if they obtain the information on the sources, they will rule that a journalism or public interest exception applies, and dismiss whatever sham GDPR complaint they had someone file to set this off.
- hyperpape 8y ago
  Your post makes it sound as if, no matter how corrupt this is, their demand is within the letter of the law. If so, that is a pretty nasty unintended consequence.
  - ccnafr 8y ago
    That's exactly what he's saying.
  - celticninja 8y ago
    Usual thing with these laws, within the letter of the law but not within the spirit of it.

ilikechairs 8y ago

you can't pass regulations requiring governments to protect personal data then get mad when a government goes to protect personal data. Who that data is about, whether a high-profile politician or an average joe, doesn't matter. Either everyone is protected from third parties gathering data on them, or nobody is. Can't have it both ways.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Can't have it both ways Yes one can. One can simply exempt the law's application to certain people, e.g. the fourth estate. GDPR does that. The problem, here, is the government is judge, jury and executioner.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Well, technically, the state is always judge, jury and executioner. These functions may devolve to different parts of the state but they are always part of the state. Which is to say that any law that grants journalists more freedom of expression than the average person is going to run up against the problem of state then aiming to define journalists as "the people we like". It's like current employment, where it's illegal to fire someone on the grounds of race but legal to fire them "for no reason at all". That situation can protect people but it's clearly rather weak.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > technically, the state is always judge, jury and executioner Pardon me, I meant to say "prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner." In jury trials, the jury is the jury. Not the government. And in American civil cases, the prosecutor is a private citizen's attorneys. Not the state. GDPR's structure is highly state-reliant. It's analogous to securities regulation in the United States. Any complaint triggers an investigation by the state, with the state able to bring and decide on charges and fines. If you trust your government, this isn't a big deal. If you don't trust your government, it is horrific.

ezoe 8y ago

Seriously, If you want to be a journalist reporting about own government corruption. Storing the data inside the local country is the worst option. Why nobody thought about that?

macintux 8y ago
I'm also a bit confused by the use of a Facebook post to disseminate this information.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Journalist heroes must be convicted, brave and honest, but they do not need to be OPSEC experts. People who spend all day reading about PGP, and people who decide to risk retaliation by publicizing documents that have come to them, are both minority groups that rarely overlap (because then you'd have to have two unlikely traits, which is a lot less likely than having one.)
  - tokai 8y ago
    >but they do not need to be OPSEC experts This is evidently wrong.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      They might need to be OPSEC experts if they want to publish two articles, but to publish one they do not. I'm pointing out that civic motivation and technical knowledge aren't correlated.
  - kd5bjo 8y ago
    Language sidebar: You might want to alter your word choice a bit. As an American, “must be convicted” reads as “must be found guilty in court”, which I’m pretty sure isn’t what you meant. Even changing the order to “brave, convicted and honest” would help — putting the ambiguous item in the middle of the list helps to clarify which meaning you intended.
8y ago

batrat 8y ago

They are one of the best journalists in Romania, of course they want to shut it down. If this goes their way we are doomed not only because they shut down Rise Project but the entire media.

petre 8y ago
The entire non-afilliated and non-partisan media. Or what you'd otherwise call the free press. The rest it's just propaganda machines in the hands of special interests.

georgeburdell 8y ago

Not sure if I understand. How is a data privacy law being used to get an organization to reveal its sources? The article mentions something about the government needing to know how data were stored, but that’s all I could see that addressed this question. Edit: Comments filled me in. The regulation seems to relate in part to people having the right to know who is collecting what data on them.

pennaMan 8y ago
The current government operates more like Erdogan or Putin than an EU country. The same government appeals to "human rights regulations of the EU" to justify passing laws that save several heads of government from ongoing corruption trials.
buboard 8y ago
They 're probably relying on "data access requests", which is their right under GDPR.
elliekelly 8y ago
The source presumably had the information lawfully and, under GDPR, owed a duty to the subject of the information to (i) protect it from disclosure, and (ii) notify the subject of the information in the event of a breach or unlawful disclosure. However, GDPR does not extend that duty to protect/disclose when the data in question is being used for journalistic purposes. I suspect the corrupt government is just as eager to find the source of their leak as they are to bully these journalists into silence. This is what the demand letter requests[1]: - The purpose and legal basis of publishing on the Internet (Facebook) of personal data, at the adress https://www.facebook.com/notes/rise-project/teleormanleaks/1937024593056150; https://www.facebook.com/notes/rise-project/teleormanleaks/1... - The date/period of time when the said personal data was published on your Facebook account; - The source from where the personal data published on Facebook was obtained; - The support (electronic and/or physical) where you stored the documents/images published on Facebook; - If the mobile storage devices (tablet, HDD, memory stick) were/are password protected or encrypted; - If you have other information/documents containing personal data of the said people; - If the personal data or documents that contain personal data of the said people were revealed in other circumstances - with the specification of these circumstances; - The way in which you informed the said people, in conformity with Art. 13-14 of GDPR. [1] https://www.occrp.org/en/16-other/other-articles/8876-english-translation-of-the-letter-from-the-romanian-data-protection-authority-to-rise-project https://www.occrp.org/en/16-other/other-articles/8876-englis... edit: formatting

anticensor 8y ago

I can assure this will not happen in Bulgaria and in Turkey (which is not an EU member but has a similar data protection law), because disclosed sources might reveal possible sources and uncover state corruption, to the point of invalidating a whole election.

buboard 8y ago
turkey is not in the EU
- anticensor 8y ago
  Turkey is not in the EU, but it has a similar enough data protection law (KVKK), and unlike GDPR, this also covers the government operators (they cannot make 'we have different interests' excuse here); and unlike former EU DPD, we have strict data protection officer requirements (actually even stricter than GDPR by having a central track record of DPOs).
  - buboard 8y ago
    sure but the kicker here is that romania's government is using the EU as an appeal to "higher power" to justify its actions, while Erdogan can't do that.

orbitingpluto 8y ago

Well this was certainly an interesting link form the same page: https://www.occrp.org/en/28-ccwatch/cc-watch-indepth/8813-a-scandal-a-murder-and-a-mystery-in-bulgaria https://www.occrp.org/en/28-ccwatch/cc-watch-indepth/8813-a-... "But the victim of the brutal rape and murder was Bulgarian television journalist Viktoria Marinova — and her last broadcast was about the theft of hundreds of millions of euros from European Union-funded programs in her country. Even those who had never heard of the so-called “GP scandal” certainly know about it now. In the program, which aired just six days before she was killed, Marinova interviewed reporters from OCCRP’s Bulgarian partner, Bivol and its Romanian partner, the RISE Project."

tin7in 8y ago
This murder was most certainly not related to that report. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/viktoria-marinova-murder-rape-bulgaria-man-kill-journalist-stade-severin-krassimirov-a8592051.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/viktoria-mar...
- Para2016 8y ago
  The 21 year old guy said he doesn't remember raping, robbing, or murdering her because he "blacked out" but he says he regrets it? You believe that? That means he doesn't have to supply a single detail of how the rape and murder even happened. And the DNA evidence? Trivial to link to somebody in a corrupt system. If he's going to confess he needs to provide details, like if she was sodomized, where he hit her, etc. Plus what drugs was he on? Either he could still test positive or they can hair test him.
- orbitingpluto 8y ago
  Sorry, my bad for not specifying that. Deaths of journalists are one of those things to always note. Romania =/= Bulgaria

mariusmg 8y ago

Muie PSD. Crooked, corrupted political party trying to escape from a massive corruption scandal using GDPR. Shameful.

RealityVoid 8y ago
What is even more concerning is the fact that they still have so many supporters when they are so obviously up to their neck in corruption. Muie PSD.
humanfromearth 8y ago
+1, now go ahead and donate here: https://www.riseproject.ro/donatii/ https://www.riseproject.ro/donatii/
petre 8y ago
Swearing and shaming isn't going to solve anything because these people have no shame. They're just going to use your swearing against you and call you hooligans on national TV, like they did with the people beaten up by the miners in ’91. If you are fed up with mainstream parties, support or join any of the resistance movements.
kunkurus 8y ago
English version: https://www.riseproject.ro/investigation/ https://www.riseproject.ro/investigation/
cristiantincu 8y ago
Muie PSD!

ElBarto 8y ago

They are trying it on. The journalists should not cave.

RealityVoid 8y ago
Rise officially said they will not cave. Rise Project has exceptional investigative journalism and are very serious about their job.
- ElBarto 8y ago
  Good to hear.

exabrial 8y ago

Predictable outcome from an over-reaching law :/ Definitely some good parts to it, but it went way beyond what it needed to. And I'm tired of clicking cookie popups. I literally do not care.

scrollaway 8y ago
s/law/government/. You do realize that corrupt governments abusing good laws is daily life in Romania? I mean, you're in the US, so you should definitely know what that's like.
- dominotw 8y ago
  > you're in the US, so you should definitely know what that's like. Are you referring to immigration laws not being enforced in US? I think its much more complex that 'corrupt governments'.
  - scrollaway 8y ago
    Not sure where you got "immigration laws" from my post.
    - dominotw 8y ago
      it was guess.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  In USA, "good" laws are a tiny minority of the total. How could it be otherwise? We have thousands of scoundrels working all day long every day writing more of them.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > I mean, you're in the US, so you should definitely know what that's like. Whataboutism aside, most definitely, hence the opposition to such "good" laws in the first place. The perspective of taking the good-with-the-bad status quo compared to the alternatives is rooted in rational precedence.

throw2016 8y ago

It's strange to see the Romanian government try to use the GPDR to harass journalists. Governments have become increasingly shameless about going after the press so no cover is required. The UK government [1] has done this to multiple journalists including the Guardian, BBC [2], Greenwald's partner famously among others under the 'terrorism act'. The US govt [3] is liberally using subpoenas, court processes and threatening new laws [4] to force journalists to give up sources. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/14/government-terrorism-journalists-investigatory-powers-bill-snooper-charter https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/14/government-ter... [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-use-terror-powers-to-seize-bbc-newsnight-journalists-laptop-a6712636.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-use-terro... [3] https://pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/increasing-number-journalists-have-recently-faced-subpoenas/ https://pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/increasing-number-journa... [4] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-leaks-jeff-sessions-media-give-up-sources-a7877421.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... [5] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/us/james-risen-faces-jail-time-for-refusing-to-identify-a-confidential-source.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/us/james-risen-faces-jail... [6] https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/press_subpoena_source_obama.php https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/press_subpoena_sour...

logfromblammo 8y ago

Did someone forget to stake Ceaushescu's body and pin it down with a big rock? Is all the old repression and corruption coming back, now that the latest leaders are too young to remember what had to be done to reduce it, just a little bit?

petre 8y ago
It isn't coming back, it was there all along, and they're not leaders, they are members of one or several organised crime syndicates disguised as political parties.

itsreallyme 8y ago

Every time new, complicated laws are passed they go through 4 steps: 1. It’s really great, trust us 2. Lemmings approve 3. Everyone is screwed 4. Lemmings talk about it critically and pretend that they understand exactly what went wrong

mgbmtl 8y ago
Nice way to kill a conversation and any hope of building something better. Romania's institutions are corrupt and dysfunctional, there isn't much more to say than that. It would be nice for the EU to lean in, but it's unlikely to do so, given the rise of anti-EU populism. Those journalists need help.
- itsreallyme 8y ago
  Right... it’s not that power corrupts; it’s that power is good and corruption is just something that coincidentally keeps popping up everywhere where there is power. Also, what conversation? The one-sided echo-chamber where dissenting opinions are immediately met with hostility and censorship?
  - trophycase 8y ago
    Power doesn't corrupt. It's generally just narcissists and egotists who want power the most.
forapurpose 8y ago
Anyone who disagrees with you and supports GDPR is a lemming? > Lemmings talk about it critically ... The only people I see blaming GDPR are GDPR critics. And, curiously, they all are repeating each other's arguments sort of like a herd of ...
- itsreallyme 8y ago
  I meant lemmings talking about the situation critically, but I also meant the second definition of critical.

raquo 8y ago

Where are all the people who were saying GDPR is fine to be underspecified because European governments are benevolent and will choose to be good even when they don't have to?

icebraining 8y ago
I don't see how this is a problem of underspecification.
- raquo 8y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18418610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18418610
- mtarnovan 8y ago
  It is a problem with under-specification, because GDPR is supposed to be just a guiding framework and each government should implement its own compatible laws. I also was afraid the Romanian government (and other autocratic governments) will do a poor job translating the GDPR into national law.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    That's not true; the GDPR is not a Directive, but a Regulation, meaning the actual text applies directly, it's not transposed by the national legislators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_(European_Union) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_(European_Union)
    - mtarnovan 8y ago
      That's correct, however the GDPR contains some clauses allowing each state to pass national laws to supplement it, and I expect most states will.
blub 8y ago
No law can be beneficial if the individuals and institutions applying it are corrupt and abusive. In theory the Soviet Union and other communist governments had lots of laws outlining a fair and equal treatment of citizens, in practice they were disappearing people.

noarchy 8y ago

Is it really a revelation that governments cannot be trusted any more than corporations with our data? Their potential for abuse is even worse: you cannot opt-out of using government like you can a Facebook or a Google.

ainiriand 8y ago
At least you can choose the government...

nickpp 8y ago

This is exactly what critics of GDPR feared will happen. Meanwhile, the pro-GDPR hysteria went on until the inevitable happened. But hey, at least now every tiny blog will dump a huge pop up every time I visit telling me how important is my "privacy" to them.

blub 8y ago
Oh, which critics were worried about journalists? I've read most if not all the GDPR topics on HN and all the GDPR critics I've read were basicslly worried about ad-funded businesses or an abstract concept of freedom from government control - as in let the market decide. So it's far fetched to now claim that everyone was worried about journalism. Furthermore, this is clearly political power abuse. Apparently the same organisation was raided for a "fraud" investigation. The problem's the corrupt government, not the privacy law.
- nickpp 8y ago
  That "abstract concept" - well this is how it gets implemented in the real world. A corrupt government and an overreaching regulation (look ma, two oxymorons in a single phrase!) and this is the price you pay for... for what? What did you actually gain from gdpr?
  - blub 8y ago
    I believe this same government was in the news for essentially making bribes legal, as long as they were under a specific amount... and yet you think it's the GDPR of all things that enables their abuse? The GDPR which mandates exceptions for journalism, by the way.
    - nickpp 8y ago
      No, GDPR also enables this abuse. Because GDPR was the criticized one, not that govt. Criticized for enabling this, for chilling effects on European startups, for solidifying the monopoly of huge web behemoths like Facebook and google, and for generally creating a shitty everyday browsing excperience. All for the absolutely ZERO benefits GDPR brought so far...

resters 8y ago

For some reason HN turned against WikiLeaks over the past few years, but this kind of thing is why Wikileaks is a good idea. Governments should not have the option of forcing journalists to do anything.

ohashi 8y ago
For some reason, reason being it turned into a Russian propaganda outlet.
- Tomte 8y ago
  And disseminating anti-semitic propaganda on their Twitter account.
  - resters 8y ago
    It's not clear who posted that and it's a small blip in the overall stellar reputation of WL's journalism.
- resters 8y ago
  Still not seeing any evidence for this. WL would surely publish any high quality leaked info on Russia or on any US politicians regardless of party or stance on Russia.
pudo 8y ago
I’d describe it the opposite way. The lesson learned from Wikileaks was two-fold: use digital tools well, but be aware there’s always a physical pressure point. Wikileaks became more whacky after JA was tethered to an embassy. Similarly, in this case, the potential problem is fines for the reporters working with the material, not the chance that it could disappear.
- resters 8y ago
  Most journalistic outfits would have completely folded long before they reached the level of pressure that Assange has been dealing with for years now. That's the point... when journalists upset governments, ugly things happen. The last person we should be blaming is Assange!

graphememes 8y ago

It's almost like there were a lot of people warning about legal ramifications of GDPR and nobody listened. Same thing with the meme law

i_phish_cats 8y ago

I work in email security and the WHOIS information we relied on to find out domains bulk-registered by spammers/phishers has essentially gone dark because of GDPR.

ddmma 8y ago

Fighting EU with their own tools such as GDPR. You should know also that these guys from romanian government been involved so much with changing laws and finding ways to avoid it until they become experts. On one hand they give social benefits and impression that people have sallary growth in order for government members to stay in power. Then they make their deals and cover their traces thru laws and other ‘justice system’. Also be aware also on the multisystem universe called ‘parallel state’.. that guy Dragnea, dosen’t have any limits!

kasey_junk 8y ago

Well that didn’t take long.

temporallobe 8y ago

Hey Europe, that’s bot how journalism works. Without the basic protections of journalists, you don’t have journalism, you have state-controlled propganda.

hanspeter 8y ago
Please don't equate Romania with the rest of Europe. If this story holds truth there will soon be talk in the remaining Europe to show Romania the door out of EU. You should also know that many countries in Europe has less corruption than USA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
- mtarnovan 8y ago
  > If this story holds truth there will soon be talk in the remaining Europe to show Romania the door out of EU Are you serious? That's the last thing the EU wants. Strictly speaking it's not even possible (legally) to force a state to leave the EU.
  - hanspeter 8y ago
    I did not say EU. I said Europe. The behaviour from Romainian politicians is grossly unacceptable and inconceivable in most European nations. National politicians throughout Europe will talk about a EU without "bad apples" as they have in many other cases.
    - mtarnovan 8y ago
      > to show Romania the door out of EU > I did not say EU Really? Also, you want to punish a whole country for some corrupt politicians?

shaki-dora 8y ago

Because I have frequently seen conspiracy theories regarding George Soros even on HN, I want to take this opportunity to point out that the organisation reporting this is sponsored by him, via his Open Society Foundation. It's also fairly representative of their projects. In the way that, having been marginally involved with some of the work they do in Eastern Europe, I went looking for information on their sponsors with the specific expectation of finding the OSF among them.

chimen 8y ago
Your comment adds nothing to this discussion. Soros was NOT mentioned in this post or thread.

mattio 8y ago

If a government is doing this, it doesn't belong in the EU at all. edit: the 'subjects' of the government however do need them in the EU, so hopefully the EU can protect those citizens against their own government?

vixen99 8y ago
Turkey?

anonytrary 8y ago

Wouldn't this just incentivize people to stop sharing information?

justinclift 8y ago

The url should probably have the embedded tracking link removed. "?fbclid=IwAR3oyyn-S4AchYYnsQlw_jZASnHclQxLPwS66IsgF19W73WjtFXYU-FhuYM"