“Since this is a phenomenon that affects almost all aspect of human rights, I was thinking about what to focus on today, so I decided to go back to my background of criminology and try to explain hybrid attacks and disinformation from our criminological point of view, along with prevention of course, in context of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”, said Amina Shurkovic, at Conference: Attacks on democracy and human rights: Civil society organizations in support of Western Balkans societies facing disinformation, hate speech and hybrid attacks, organized by CIVIL in cooperation with Balkan Forum and members of the Civil Society Platform for Democracy and Human Rights (CSP).
She said that hybrid threat are increasingly difficult to monitor and respond to. The actual state of cyber-attacks is not covered in any statistics.
Three factors create a criminal offence, mentioned Shurkovic.
“The first factor is intention, the individual or the group must have the ability and knowledge. It is important to emphasize the difference between lies and factual errors. A person may make a factually incorrect statement believing it to be true. It is the intention to deceive that separates these two categories.
The second factor is attackers. The people or groups who are behind the cyber- attacks and misinformation. Some common motives are profit, revenge, political factors, and other emotional needs.
Why do people behave so differently when they move to cyber space? Flexibility of identity, anonymity, and individuals sometimes commit acts in groups that they never would individually, which is a part of that mass mentality. Examples are politically motivated cyber-criminals who are members of extremist and radical groups and use the internet to spread propaganda, attack websites or their political enemies.
The third factor is opportunity. Opportunity for the act to be committed, which means misinformation to be transmitted. The goal of prevention strategy is to make it more difficult for potential offenders to access a target, which means increase the risk of being caught. The online media have no legal obligation to publish registration, contact or ownership info. Most online platforms are not under any kind of supervision. There are no obstacles to stop them from spreading misinformation. So we have to reduce the gain they are expecting after spreading misinformation. This can be achieved by developing critical skills and media literacy. Misinformation is poorly, or not at all, recognized as a possible threat, so there is almost no public debate for responses to it. Low awareness of cyber-security and media literacy makes population more vulnerable to crime or suitable audience for manipulation.” noted Amina Shurkovic, on Wednesday (7.28.2021), Skopje..
