Who let the dogs out - a clarification

To update and clarify my earlier post on the concerns I have about using a repressive police agency against some bad journalism, it was not the National Alliance Saeima deputy Jānis Dombrava who complained to the Security Police about coverage of the events of March 16 in a television news spot on the Russian language First Baltic Channel (PBK). Dombrava actually complained to the National Electronic Media Council (NEPLP, the Latvian abbreviation), which, in a sense, is the right place to go. It seems that the NEPLP then submitted the case to the Security Police - the agency that arrests economics lecturers for commenting on banks, the currency and the economy.
Dombrava explained his actions on Twitter but said he was pleased that the Security Police had taken the case. I find that worrisome, but I have set the facts straight as to how this case ended up in the hands of Latvia's neo-KGB lite. Sorry about the inaccuracy, Jānis.
Which brings me to the next point - should the NEPLP (or NEMC in English) be forging this kind of relationship with a repressive agency that has arrested and charged people for exercising free speech (which was clearly the case with the economist Dmitrijs Smirnovs in 2008)? The NEMC has its own means of censuring and administratively punishing the media. The Security Police should be kept as far as possible from any involvement in the content of electronic or other media. If anything, the case in question, where some anti-Semitic shouting on the soundtrack of a news spot was attributed or imputed, in the Russian translation, to the wrong person, merits this kind of censure or administrative action, at worst. There may also be a civil case by the man who was arguing (politely, with no anti-Semitic wording) with two representatives of the Anti-Fascist movement who were trying to restore the wreath they had laid (see the earlier post), since it was implied that he shouted "Jews do not belong here".  Not true, although someone did shout that and it would have been part of a story that, while the man, apparently representing the organizers of the Latvian Legion commemoration, was having a tense discussion with the Anti-Fascists, someone did shout something against Jews.
As for the NEMC, please use your own tools for settling matters with media distortions and inaccuracies. To use the Security Police is so post-Soviet. 

Nationalists turn dangerous dogs on bad journalism

Latvia’s National Alliance (NA), which I have always suspected to be discreetly (and sometimes not so) teetering on the edge between democracy and (crypto)authoritarianism, has called out the worst of the dogs in Latvia on what I will be the first to say seems to be a ratshit piece of distorted TV news.

Jānis Dombrava, a parliament or Saeima deputy from the NA filed charges with the Latvian Security Police (the guys who arrest college economics instructors for commenting on the economy) against the Russian language TV channel First Baltic Channel.  The reason was an alleged distortion of events ahead of the March 16 commemoration event for the German-drafted Latvian Legion.

I arrived too late at this event to see what happened myself, but from other news reports and You Tube footage, representatives of the Latvian Anti-Fascist Committee and Europarliamentarian Tatyana Zhdanok arrived some time ahead of the planned Legion (formally, Waffen-SS) commemoration and laid a wreath by the Freedom Monument in memory of  the victims of Nazism. The wreath even had a ribbon with these words in Latvian on it.

Some time after the wreath was laid, persons apparently somehow sympathizing with the organizers of the Legionnaire event arrived and covered the anti-Fascist wreath with tulips, then placed a red-white-red emblem representing the Latvian flag and the shoulder flash of the Latvian Legion over the defaced wreath. This was, by any standard, an act of vandalism, since the base of the Freedom Monument is often the site for flower and wreath-layings and different floral arrangements have always peacefully co-existed. Zhdanok and Josif Koren of the Anti-Fascist Committee noticed the defacement of their wreath from nearby and approached to try to restore it and move the large insignia.

At this point a confrontation started with someone who acted as if he represented the organizers of the Legion commemoration.  He tried to prevent Zhdanok and Koren from taking away the insignia and restoring their wreath. He firmly but politely asked them to leave, as “the next event” was about to start. On one of the You Tube videos, there is a point in the confrontation at which a voice off-camera shouts “ Jews do not belong here!” Koren is Jewish and I believe Zhdanok is also of Jewish descent, so this was a provocative and insulting remark, but it was not uttered by the man with whom both were having an argument over the wreath.

In the First Baltic Channel news item (I do not understand Russian, but got the gist of it), the sound of the male voice saying “Jews do not belong here” was attributed to the man with whom Zhdanok and Koren were arguing. From what I have seen, he said nothing of the kind, although the remark seems to have come from one of a not insignificant number of wackos who had gathered for the Legion commemoration.

The Russian language TV spot  appears to have been, to put it mildly, a manipulation of the truth that should be exposed, denounced and perhaps reprimanded by the National Electronic Media Council. Some journalist organizations should also censure this kind of thing.

However, whatever distortion the First Baltic Channel may have made, it is no reason to run to Latvia’s “neo-KGB”, the Security Police, whose record on free speech and press freedom is spotty, to say the least. While the TV channel’s violation of journalistic ethics is reprehensible, it is a greater danger to journalistic freedom to use a repressive police agency as a tool of enforcing “good journalism”. Even if the blatant distortions by the First Baltic Channel is not the best test case, dragging them before the Security Police, even getting the Security Police involved in media content in any way will have a chilling effect on all media (perhaps, especially, the Russian-language media).

All of which leads me back to the nagging thought that just under the surface of the NA’s nationalist and democratic veneer, there may be an authoritarian streak that grabs for the biggest and most (unpredictably) dangerous stick around, to invoke repression rather than criticism and debate. And while on the subject of March 16, it reminds me of a very interesting man, an American academic from Lithuania that I met on the fringes of the March 16 event. He is Dovid Katz, whose main activity is the study of Baltic dialects of Yiddish, but who also aligns with the Anti-Fascist view that yes, fascism is really coming back to the Baltics because some old geezers gather along with some younger wackos and neo-Nazis. I honestly believe that these anti-Fascist guys have the volume, brightness and contrasted jacked up all the way on their picture of things. No, the Nazis are not really coming back in the Baltics or Eastern Europe. Yes, there are wackos around, as in the US (where Nazis marched in Skokie in the 1970s, all kinds of crackpot racist and anti-Semitic or perversely philo-Semitic Jesus is returning to the Temple in Jerusalem so glory to Israel sects about) and that is about it.

As far as I know, the NA didn’t condemn the defacement of the wreath laid by Zhdanok and Koren, which would have been the right thing to do. They at times traipse around issues of anti-Semitism (one of their members, who was criticized for this, even used the term “intelligent anti-Semitism”, whatever that means). This is the kind of stuff that feeds the paranoia about the Nazis coming back. Calling in the Security Police feeds my paranoia about a party in the government undermining media freedom.

Latvian security police end investigation of incitement to desecrate the flag

The Latvian Security Police (Drošības policija) have ended an investigation surrounding calls on the internet for persons to desecrate the Latvian flag. The case has been ended because no "victim" of any crime was found (surprise, surprise!). Had anyone been found guilty of the actual crime of flag desecration, the perpetrator could face a stiff fine and up to three years imprisonment.
The call to desecrate the flag was published on the internet last year and contained a statement that any any "radical" advocate of free expression (say, like the US First Amendment) can only agree with:

In our view, any person, citizen or non-citizen, has the absolute right to do with the flag as he or she pleases. At the same time, the state has no right to punish a person for defacing, burning, tearing, or tramping the flag, The state must guarantee the right of persons to freely express their views. If a person has reason to take such actions with the flag, then he shall not even be deterred from such an action, nver mind punished.


For my Latvian readers:

"Mūsu skatījumā, jebkuram cilvēkam - pilsonim vai nepilsonim - ir absolūtas tiesības rīkoties ar karogu pēc saviem ieskatiem. Savukārt valstij nav absolūti nekādu tiesību cilvēku sodīt par to, ka viņš karogu izķēmo, dedzina, plēš, mīda kājām. Valstij ir jāgarantē cilvēka tiesības brīvi paust savus uzskatus. Ja kāds cilvēks uzskata, ka viņam ir pamats tā rīkoties ar karogu, tad viņu nedrīkst pat atturēt no šādas rīcības, kur nu vēl sodīt.

I fully agree with this statement, although I would never burn a Latvian flag. To me it represents, or should represent, the freedom that allows anyone else to do just that (the same goes for the US flag).

I would qualify the right to burn or desecrate a flag by saying -- desecrate a flag that is your property and don't create a significant public nuisance (setting something other than the flag on fire). Ripping down flags or national symbols that belong to public authorities or private persons is vandalism and should be punished with no greater severity than the damaging or destruction of any other, non-symbolic public property, such as a no-parking sign.

As for the Security Police, maybe they should avoid the chilling effect of investigations of this kind. As for the Saeima, it should repeal the laws that forbid flag desecration or give it any special status above and beyond the laws applicable to vandalism and destruction of public property. 

Latvia gets another badge for banana republic repression

Well, Latvia got what it was “working” for – a drop of 20 places to 50^th place in the world in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. It was in “good” company, just three places behind the 47^th place United States, which has disgraced its own benchmark First Amendment press freedom protections by arresting journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in several cities.

Latvia earned its sharp drop, according to Reporters Without Borders, for two incidents this year – a raid by anti-corruption police on the newspaper Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (NRA) and the detention, for 48 hours, of the editor of a website in Latvian which exposed what it claimed was suspcious e-mail correspondence between Riga mayor Nils Ušakovs and the Russian Embassy.

Unfortunately, I missed the NRA incident in this blog, or perhaps I thought that an investigation by the anti-corruption police (KNAB) was justified, since the newspaper is effectively controlled by Ventspils mayor, oligarch and accused money-laundered and economic criminal Aivars Lembergs. I may have been wrong.

In any event, if you scroll back through what I have posted during 2011, there is plenty of reason to consider the freedom of expression (not just the rights of journalists) to have been dragged down to the level of a black humor banana republic by several actions of the authorities. So this ranking is well deserved, though I am more worried about the decline of press freedom in the country where I grew up – the United States. I frequently refer to the clear language of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law...”. That, for me, sets the standard for freedom of the press and speech, and it is very disturbing that the US cannot live up to its own standards. What can one expect of Latvia.

Nonetheless, respecting the rights of journalists and the freedom of expression is a low cost enterprise. Just let them be. And it has been proven possible in a country with much the same historical experience and “post-Soviet” political culture as Latvia – it's neighbor to the north, Estonia, ranked number three in the press freedom index after Finland and Norway. Another lesson not learned by a country that seems to want a downward spiral into cheap-ass (no concentration camps, just petty and stupid repression) banana republic status. 

Another suspicious "hate speech" case in Latvia

It looks like Latvia has another "hate speech" case, with one Ingus Graudiņš getting a suspended sentence for writing anti-Russian comments on an unnamed internet website. According to media reports, Graudiņš was involved in some kind of scuffle with Russians on the street, then went off and wrote some kind of rant or a series of anti-Russian rants. Apparently strong, perhaps racist language was used, though none of the matter-of-fact reports I have seen quote anything that the accused wrote.
As a defender of free speech, I am against any and all hate speech laws. Speech is speech - you may dislike it, hate it, be enraged by it, but you should not empower the government to imprison people simply for what they say or write, no matter who it enrages, insults, or offends. Civil libel and slander cases are another thing, but even here I would tread very carefully, especially if public figures are involved. If you choose the limelight, well, realize that sometimes it can be a targeting beacon for shit.
The case of Graudiņš, on the facts that I know, looks like a selective political prosecution in order to have a chilling effect on discussion of ethnic issues ahead of referendum on making Russian a second state language that will be held in early 2012. Depraved racist ravings are regular, daily occurances on Latvian internet portals and there should be a line of hundreds outside the courts if all these comments were to be prosecuted. I searched but couldn't find (portal content shifts) a series of comments I saw to some news story earlier today blaming "the Jews" for whatever it was that  had happened. This is so commonplace, along with the lambasting of gays and advocating their imprisonment or extermination, that one regards it as part of the written background noise on the Latvian internet.
Certainly this does not reflect well on Latvian society, but ignorance, bigotry and folly can't be remedied by repressive police methods and the stifling of political debate, even if one or several of the many voice in the debate are raving and raging, rather than making arguments. Sad, but let's not fill prisons over it.
Another worrying thing is that we have had several outrages against free expression in this country, the latest being a police raid on an internet site kompromat.lv, but there has been absolutely no reaction, not even a two-sentence mention on the Index on Censorship website or its free speech blogs.  We had police arrest spontaneous demonstrators, we had an internet medium's office raided, editor detained for 48 hours, servers seized, and now a rather suspicious hate speech case. I informed Index about all of these. May I kindly ask Index on Censorship- why the fuck are you completely ignoring this?

More on the Latvian police action against a journalist

This is a chronology of events surrounding the arrest of Leonids Jakabsons, a journalist and editor of the investigative and whistle-blowing website kompromat.lv. 

Jakabsons has been released after being held the maximum 48 hours before a suspect must be brought before a judge and a case presented for further detention (a formal criminal investigation must be started or charges brought). It is pretty clear that this detention is a deliberate application of the chilling effect, as was done when Ilze Nagla, a Latvian television journalist, had her home searched and laptop seized after reporting on the activities of "Neo", a cyberactivist who leaked anonymized salary data from government and municipal institutions that he obtained by exploiting a "hole" in the State Revenue Service database. Later, when arrested, "Neo" was discovered to be Ilmārs Poikāns, an artificial intelligence researcher at the University of Latvia faculty of mathematics and computer science.

THE CHRONOLOGY

November 16, 2011. kompromat.lv publishes Riga Mayor Nils Usakovs correspondence with Alexander Hapilov of the Russian Embassy, a person suspected of spying

November 18, 2011 Ceaseless cyberattacks start against kompromat.lv and continue to the present.. 

November 21, 2011  kompromat.lv complains to the Cybercrime unit of the Economic Police, the responsible detective Aleksandrs Bebris shows no interest in the complaint/

November 22, 2011 After news appears on news portals about the cyberattacks on kompromat.lv, the Latvian IT security incident response unit CERT.LV contacts kompromat.lv and offers its assistance. CERT.LV examines log files, identifies the attacker and is prepared to participate in the case as a witness.

December 3, 2011, Detective Aleksandr Bebris announced that the Cybercrime unit has more important cases to investigate and no further investigation would be undertaken, even though the evidence submitted was more than sufficient to arrest those responsible.

December 14, 2011, Detective Aleksandrs Bebris asks kompromat.lv systems administrator Edmunds Zalitis to give a witness statement with regard to the cyber attack on kompromat.lv. Detective Bebris was particularly interested in the technical specifications of kompromat.lv’ s servers and whether there were backup copies, The detective also wanted access password, which, for security reasons, were not disclosed.

December 15, 2011 at 12:30 Cybercrimes unit detective Aleksandrs Bebris and three masked policemena around at the Riga World Trade Center and, using a sledge hammer, break into the office of an internet club. After an hour and a half, the police leave, taking along the kompromat.lv server , a server labeled “Backup” and two optical labeled Norton Systemworks 2005 (as could be determined from a bad quality carbon copy). The search and seizure had been requested by detective Nauris Liepins of the National Police, the search warrant was  approved by Judge Rinalds Silakalns. Aleksandrs Bebris and Peteris Reinfelds participated in the search.

At the same time, kompromat.lv journalist Leonid Jakabsons is arrested at his home and all data media found in his residence during a search are seized.

contact provided by the source

edmunds zalite
+371 29222919

THE LESSONS LEARNED:   Journalists in Latvia are operating in a latent crypto-authoritarian system where their freedom to work and the security of their working materials (digital or otherwise) can be violated at any time. To build better defenses, it is best to use cloud services and store or back-up notes and other confidential material in countries such as Iceland, Sweden, perhaps the US. Certainly any website like kompromat.lv should be hosted outside Latvia. Critical data should be encrypted at the cost of losing any media or computer it is on, while the authorities struggle to try to break in. 

Latvian website journalist jailed

I am reposting this item, apparently written by Reporters without Frontiers (or Borders) in Latvia. I was out of town when this happened on December 15 and I had assumed www.kompromat.lv to be a Russian-language website, which I don't read because I don't speak Russian. This is not to say that repression against Russian-language media in Latvia should get the short shrift, just that I cannot examine the issues as precisely as if the reasons (or excuses) for the repression were in a language I read. So here it is.
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Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns yesterday’s arrest of Leonīds Jākobsons, a news website owner and editor who for the past month has been posting copies of a series of compromising emails that had been sent or received by Nils Ušakovs, mayor of Riga and a former member of the Latvian parliament. The organisation demands his immediate release.

The emails that Jākobsons began posting on his website Kompromat (www.kompromat.lv) on 17 November indicated that Ušakovs provided information to a member of the Russian embassy in Riga and engaged in a strange correspondence that has aroused suspicions about the nature of Ušakovs’ activities.

The winner of the National Journalism Prize in 2009 in the “Defence of Media Freedom” category, Jākobsons is reportedly also in the possession of other – so far unpublished – emails suggesting that illegal commissions were used to finance a political party’s election campaign illegally.

“We demand Jākobsons’ immediate release,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It is unacceptable that a journalist can be jailed for an alleged media offence in a European Union member country. “The confidentiality of journalists’ sources is being seriously threatened by the seizure of all of his computer equipment and by the pressure being put on him to reveal how he obtained the emails.

“The mayor of Riga can bring a legal action against Jākobsons if he thinks it is necessary, or he can take advantage of the right of reply if he thinks he has been defamed. But Jākobsons’ arrest and imprisonment and the confiscation of all of his equipment seem more like an act of revenge than the actions of an impartial judicial system.”

During a raid on Jākobsons’ apartment yesterday, police seized two computers and all the computer storage material and devices they could find. After completing their search, they arrested Jākobsons on suspicion of illegally acquiring electronic communication data. The police also went to the premises of an Internet Service provider and seized the three servers that hosted the Kompromat website, which can no longer be accessed.

The day after Jākobsons posted the first emails on Kompromat, the site began being the target of a major DDoS attack that lasted several days. On 21 November, a hacker succeeded in deleting all of the site’s archives (more than 10 years of content in Russian and Latvian). The site’s editors were able to restore all the content from a backup but the attacks continued.

The police had refused to accede to a request by Jakobsons for an investigation into the origin of the cyber-attacks on his site.

A well-known and widely-read site, Kompromat has done a lot of investigative coverage of corruption, organized crime, drug trafficking and other criminal activity. It has often been pressured and prosecuted, but none of its personnel had ever been attacked or arrested in the past.

Currently held at Čiekurkalns police station in Riga, Jākobsons is expected to be transferred to the city’s main prison shortly. Conditions in the jail are poor and Reporters Without Borders has been told he will probably have to share a cell with ordinary offenders.