Tag Archives: Hungary

Hungary’s Democracy Starts Its Revival

vote sign

vote

Democracy requires ongoing maintenance and that comes in the form of civic engagement by the people within the democracy. In Hungary, the now former prime minister Viktor Orban, has lost this past weekend’s election thanks to the hard work of civil society. This all happened despite the support of other authoritarians like Putin, and even a rally lead by alt-right symbol JD Vance. For years Hungary has a beacon of hope for politicians and corporate elites that wanted to control people rather than work with them. Former Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper has praised Orban and tried to influence elections around the world in the hopes of eroding democracy.

With this context in mind, you can start to understand why it is good news that Orban lost: it gives hope to the scores of people fighting against authoritarians hope.

Turnout in the election reached a record 79.50%, according to the near-complete vote count.

Orban, who was seeking a fifth straight term, has transformed his country into a model of “illiberal democracy,” clashing with Brussels over rule-of-law issues, as well as over support for war-torn Ukraine.

Magyar burst onto the scene just two years ago, promising to fight corruption and offering better public services. He drew support against a backdrop of economic stagnation, and despite an electoral system skewed in favor of Orban’s Fidesz party.

Congratulations for Magyar poured in from around Europe, with France and Germany urging him to work together for a “strong Europe.”

Read more.

Digital Violence Exposes NSO’s Tools Targetting Activists

computer screen

NSO made the news again due to their tools being used to spy on Bahraini and Hungarian activists, which obviously isn’t good. NSO is a cyber security organization that focuses on offensive rather than defence; they sell hacking tools and exploits to target individuals. Anyone with enough money can buy their attack tools, including rich individuals or companies. In Mexico their spying tool was used to intimidate campaigners asking the government to regulate sugar content in sofas.

We know spying on human rights activists is not good for anyone, and three organizations teamed up to expose how NSO supports such spying (and thus abuse). Forensic Architecture, Amnesty International, and Citizen Lab all worked together to create a neat website called Digital Violence which explores the complexity and reach of NSO’s tools.

First detected in 2015, the NSO Group’s Pegasus malware has reportedly been used in at least 45 countries worldwide to infect the phones of activists, journalists and human rights defenders. Having learnt that our former collaborators and close associates were hacked by Pegasus, Forensic Architecture undertook 15 months of extensive open-source research, interviews assisted by Laura Poitras, and developed bespoke software to present this data as an interactive 3D platform, along with video investigations narrated by Edward Snowden to tell the stories of the individuals targeted and the web of corporate affiliations within which NSO is nested. Supported by Amnesty International and the Citizen Lab, our analysis reveals relations and patterns between separate incidents in the physical and digital sphere, demonstrating how infections are entangled with real world violence, and extend within the professional and personal networks of civil society actors worldwide.

Check out digital violence.

One way to defend yourself from NSO group and other malicious agents is to keep your software up to date. Apple released a patch this week, so update your Apple devices.