Defending the Home Front

Hungarian parliamentary speaker condemns WikiLeaks as "information terrorism"

In a further escalation of what many refer to as an info-war spawned by the leaking of confidential documents by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, the Hungarian parliamentary speaker, Laszlo Kover, late last weekend referred to the action as a case of information terrorism. Kover, who was minister without a portfolio overseeing the secret services between 1998 and 2000, admits that what has been leaked isn't that significant and won't have a long-lasting effect. Still, he feels that it's necessary to devise a method to prevent similar cases from happening in the future.

Unlike other countries, nothing substantive had so far appeared concerning the content of Hungary's diplomatic correspondence. Apart from criticizing the country's contribution to the war effort in Afghanistan as ineffective and primarily focused on "getting home unscathed," what had caused a minor political scandal was the revelation that in the summer of 2009 US diplomats in Budapest were asked to collect information (including biographic data) on leading government and opposition politicians. The radical nationalist JOBBIK party proposed setting up a vetting committee to deal with what they regarded as the government's weak response to allegations of espionage.

If Kover's statement the past weekend was supposed to somehow appease those on the far-right, then it's doubtful it succeeded. The Speaker of the Parliament appeared unsure of whether he was dealing with true information terrorists or just simple pranksters. All the same Kover noted that even if the latter was the case and those responsible weren't fully aware of the weight of their actions, what they did was nevertheless a threat to democracy.

Taking into consideration Kover's past reputation as a "political hothead" of sorts, his remarks have been deemed by many to be nothing more than simple noise pollution. Yet the comments made by Kover isn't merely the empty rhetoric of someone who has tagged the word "terrorism" to an activity of which he disapproves in order to persuade others to disapprove. Given the government's recent moves to clamp down on dissent through a new, restrictive media law, Kover's comments appear to lay the groundwork for an attempt to try and censor the Internet in Hungary. This was made quite clear by Kover himself when he said that the WikiLeaks affair showed that "it is necessary to tackle" the taboo that surrounds the lack of control in online news reporting.

Fines for violating rules on "balanced news coverage"

Hungary's new media law has already been criticized both within Hungary and without. According to US-based Freedom House, the latest addition to the country's comprehensive media package poses a danger to the independence of journalists and would represent "a major setback for press freedom in Hungary." On January 1st a new media bill will come into effect which seeks to impose fines for violating rules on "balanced news coverage".

According to Freedom House and other observers, the wording of the new media bill is open to broad interpretation, creating "an environment conducive to significant misuse." Under the current draft of the bill, the recently created National Media and Telecommunications Authority (NMHH) Media Council, the supreme governing body, could fine newspapers up to 25 million forints (EUR 89,000) and news websites 10 million, whereas TV and radio stations could be fined between 50 million and 200 million forints for infractions. Already, one of the country's major newspapers and its top manager may face tens of millions of forints in fines after refusing a correction request from the Media Council involving that body's leader. An article in the daily Nepszabadsag noted that Council President Annamaria Szalai will effectively become the new boss of thousands of public media employees. The paper refused to publish a correction, explaining that they believed the statement to be correct.

Regulating the Internet

So far, the Internet has been spared the worst of the government's attempt at censorship. For instance, mandatory registration of news portals and internet publications doesn't apply to internet blogs. Online publications are also exempt from having to provide "factual, timely and balanced" information, thus they are not required to strive for political impartiality.

All this could soon change, however. With the new media law rather weak on the "Internet front", the WikiLeaks affair now provides a good excuse to tighten things up. There have already been a number of attempts by the Hungarian authorities over the years to control the new media. So far these attempts were primarily focused on software piracy and obtaining user information from ISPs. Regulating content went only so far as to clamp down on pedophiles.

In a practical sense, of course, the idea of regulating the Internet in Hungary is near impossible. Only about a half of Hungarians actively use the Internet; even so, an increasing number of these users have become rather net savvy. Many utilize sites which are physically located outside the country, such as Facebook, thereby limiting the reach of the authorities.

Still, it's not so much the actual practice of regulating the Internet as much as the threats associated with any such attempt. As an old Chinese proverb goes, kill the chicken to scare the monkey. Indeed, when it comes to Internet censorship, China is the undisputed master killer of chickens.

The use of fear in order to enforce the government line is what information terrorism is all about. So far, the present administration of Prime Minister Viktor Orban shows no qualms of resorting to such methods, if necessary. Already the government has come under criticism for a number of anti-democratic gestures. These include a decree to display the governing party's national unity declaration in public buildings, the curtailment of the Constitutional Court's jurisdiction over certain affairs (with parliamentary faction leader Janos Lazar effectively declaring "we are above the Constitutional Court"), the "nullifying" of the Fiscal Council's Budget and Measures Committee, and breaking the rule of not introducing changes with retroactive effect. All this in addition to the media law which acts as a system of media supervision determined under the influence of the government majority.

The threat posed by the likes of WikiLeaks is very real to the Hungarian government

The problem isn't that confidential information which could pose a risk to national security will be revealed. Rather, of ultimate concern is that a Hungarian, copycat version of WikiLeaks will emerge, one that will focus on the activities of the government. Prior to the appearance of WikiLeaks, citizens were not entitled to information about those acting on their behalf except in the censored version that governments provided. In the past, such whistle-blowing was the work of investigative journalists; yet with journalism now hamstrung by government regulation, much of the burden of critical reporting has been left to individual citizen journalists.

In many ways, the WikiLeaks affair has revealed the true level of the region's democratic deficit. Ironically, considering what leaders like Viktor Orban had gone through in their struggle for freedom against the former communist dictatorship, it's surprising that he and others like him not only resort to the methods of the past, but that they have adopted the same attitudes, ones which try to maintain a sanitized image of those in power.

WikiLeaks and sites like it threaten to shatter this image and give people a snapshot of the world as it is, rather than the edited account agreed upon by diverse elites, whose only common interest is the maintenance of their power and the ignorance of the people over whom they govern.