On 11 April 2021, just two weeks before the general election, an Albanian media portal broke a story about the existence of a database that contained personal and sensitive information of over 910,000 Albanian citizens. They said that was being used by the government to secure votes and that the information had been taken illegally from the Civil Registry, via e-Albania, a portal set up to supposedly make citizens’ lives easier.
The data included their names, date of birth, phone number, employer, voting center, and observations collected and detailed by a “patronage”. This information could be their political preference, sexuality, details of businesses they run, whether they were disabled, and even in some cases, racial slurs. It also included the name of their patronage or government-appointed government-appointed “spy”.
The media published excerpts of the data and the original Access file made its way into the public domain. Within a few days, a website had been set up whereby people could search for themselves and identify their patronage. People started outing their patronages on social media and waving their virtual pitchforks, and I don’t blame them for this.
Now the election is done and dusted and the Socialist Party settles into a third mandate, many people seem to have forgotten about the fact that their private information which was entrusted to the state, has been misused and abused in such an atrocious manner.
I, however, am still angry.
The theft and distribution of this data have put the personal security of over 910,000 people at risk. They are at risk of identity theft, fraud, and other forms of serious criminal activity. I have already been made aware of cases where the data is being used to open fake cryptocurrency accounts, forex accounts, and digital wallets online by criminals and scammers. These accounts can then be used to launder money, typically the proceeds of drugs or corruption.
This is the data of innocent people and the implications of it being in the public domain have not been discussed enough. What concerns me the most is that over one month later, no action has been taken.
SPAK and the courts were very quick to spring into action. They brought in the journalists that broke the story and tried to seize their servers. While I appreciate this is the most efficient and proactive SPAK has been in the history of its existence, this constituted a grave threat to media freedom. Thankfully the European Court of Human Rights and the Special Appeal Court of Tirana moved to prevent such injustice from taking place.
Since then, nothing has happened. The court has not moved to investigate the PS, the government, or the Civil Registry. Data leaks are often quite easy to solve, so I’ve been reliably informed, as often sensitive data is only accessible by a few individuals. Yet here we are, over a month later, and not only are the authorities silent, but people are not even talking about it anymore. It seems to have been forgotten.
The Commissioner on Data Protection proved to be useless, and people haven’t made reports because they don’t trust the institutions. Many others are fearful that if they make a complaint against the state and the PS, it will be used against them in the future.
Even more concerningly, the government hasn’t taken a single step to safeguard the citizen’s safety. The first thing to do would be to issue new ID cards and numbers for everyone and even encourage people to change their phone numbers. A process for facilitating this should have been initiated the moment those files reached the public domain. But it hasn’t, because quite simply if they did so, they would be forced to admit what a catastrophic incident had taken place under their watch.
In terms of the patronage system, the PS has done everything in their power to try and normalize state surveillance of citizens.
They started enthusiastically talking about how useful and great patronages are, in an attempt to normalize them. This is gaslighting and manipulation of the highest degree, and as the votes showed, people bought it.
I want to be quite clear here, the patronage system is NOT normal.
There is no democratic country in the world where citizens are asked to spy on others and report back to a political party with personal and private information. There are systems in other countries where members of parties lobby, campaign, influence, and gather information door to door, but this system in Albania is different.
It is a remnant of the communist regime, which honestly is no surprise when you look at the history of the Socialist Party and many of its members.
The parallels between the systems employed by political parties to spy on citizens and the way the communist regime helped to consolidate power by putting the fear of God in much the same way are striking.
The PS currently has a higher ratio of patronages for Tirana in 2021, than the communist regime did for the entire country at the height of their surveillance activities. Let that sink in.
As for the elections. There was never any doubt in my mind that the Socialist Party would win. They control all but one Municipality, every institution, every authority, every ministry- they have had eight years to build up a network of party loyalists and to employ thousands upon thousands of people who become guaranteed votes along with their families.
I also know that pressure is exerted on state employees to vote for the party. I have seen documents where employees of the state have been asked to write the names and ID numbers of up to 12 people whose votes they can guarantee, or they will be fired.
I know that state employees are required to share propaganda on social media. I know that the government utilizes an entire network of fake Facebook profiles to generate fake support and sway public influence on Facebook. In conditions such as this, there were no other outcomes aside from them winning.
What concerns me is that a third win, however it was acquired, cements Albania’s declining democracy and freedom, and will further exacerbate state capture. These factors have already fallen over the last few years and another four years of the same isn’t going to improve that.
Thankfully we will now have opposition parties in Parliament to stop an absolute one-party state, but how effective they will remain to be seen.
It pains me to see that Albania is losing its democracy and people are losing their freedom. I believe that two mandates are too much in any democracy, let alone one as fragile and infant as Albania’s. Now that the PS has spun patronages’ as a good thing, we can expect it to continue and even intensify, even though the elections are over.
Unfortunately now, the only way for what’s left of Albania’s democracy is down and along with it, our right to private life. Big brother is here and he’s most likely watching every one of us.
