BIRN and SHARE Launch Project on Digital Freedom Violations

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BIRN Hub in partnership with SHARE Foundation, supported by Civitates, have launched a project called ‘Mapping Digital Freedom Violations’ which will run from June 2019 until November 2020 and monitor digital threats and trends in their occurrence, raise awareness about violations of digital freedom, and issue policy recommendations.

The main goal of the project is to determine who are the main players involved in disinformation and propaganda in the south-east and central Europe (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania and Serbia) through establishment of the Digital Monitoring database, continuous monitoring of digital threats, and reporting on digital freedom violations.

The project entails training for digital monitors, the design and launch of the Digital Monitoring database using the already existing experience of SHARE Foundation, the publishing of a cross-regional report and five regional investigations, plus stakeholder meetings and a final conference to promote the cross-regional report.

The project will set guidelines for carrying out the monitoring of digital rights and freedoms.

These standardised rules for categorising cases of violations of digital rights and freedoms can be adapted and applied to any country and used to emphasise the importance of the use of technology to highlight social issues, especially in countries and regions without good human rights records.

Previous monitoring has shown that the primary problems are technical attacks on online content, disabling access to content and the endangerment of information security.