The National Cyber ??Security Authority (AKSK) publicly admitted today, through a short synopsis in a television news report, that Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) devices had been installed and put into operation in Albania, as initially announced by Besmir Semanaj and later confirmed by other sources.
The devices were placed with mobile companies and immediately after them, Tik Tok was blocked (only for mobile network users).
For almost a week now, I have been requesting information from the institutions responsible for this issue in Albania and market actors, and I am still waiting for a response.
Experts in the field are the ones who make the technical assessment, but it seems that we are dealing with a significant lack of transparency for an action for which there is no evidence that it was done on a legal basis that regulates this process.
The director of AKSK said he assured Albanians that they were not being monitored, but they did not find out if there were any instructions or practices regulating data management.
The question everyone has is who has their hands on these devices, the Vodafone Albania or One Albania technician or the AKSK employee?
Also, we don't yet know what happens if one of these employees "goes crazy", is ordered or paid to filter the traffic of X individual, journalist, businessman, politician, judge or prosecutor? Who is responsible for this?
For example, how does AKSK, Vodafone Albania or One Albania prevent a hypothetical situation where a businessman pays one of the technicians who have access to the equipment to filter the traffic of a business rival to see which sites he accesses through his mobile phone and laptop?
We also need to learn who brought these devices here, were they purchased by the Albanian state? If so, is there a procurement procedure? Or are they a donation? If they are a donation, does the donor have any expectations after this "gift"?
AKSK was careful to say that DPI will only be used for 1 year until they reach an agreement with Tik Tok on the implementation of filters, but what happens if Tik Tok says it will not implement filters?
If it is said that these devices protect us from hackers and are so good, why is the message reinforced that they will only be used for a year? It is clear that there is an effort by the authorities to legalize an action that was done without the law.
They are telling us not to be afraid of us, but of hackers, and because we are protecting you.
A technician who does not operate within a regulatory framework is actually not much different from a hacker.
This reminds me of that famous fable according to which the sheep is afraid of the wolf all its life and in the end is slaughtered and eaten by the shepherd.
Didn't AKSHI take us all by the throat even though it has spent hundreds of millions of euros on these platforms?