Europe

Today, EDRi filed a DSA complaint against social media giant ‘X’ in the EU, together with our member ApTI Romania. Our investigation found that X is likely in breach of its obligations towards Trusted Flaggers by misleading them—in all tested languages except English—to submit illegal content notices on a wrong, non-functional online form.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/59025097

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.20-150032/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-20/france-and-italy-stall-eu-push-to-commit-ammunition-for-ukraine

An effort by European Union leaders to deliver €5 billion ($5.4 billion) to secure ammunition for Ukraine this year was held up by France and Italy, European diplomats said, another sign of the challenges the bloc faces in replacing US support for Kyiv.

While most of the 27 member states meeting in Brussels on Thursday have rallied around earmarking crucial financing for military assistance, France and Italy are stalling at committing to specific financial volumes, said diplomats, who were granted anonymity to discuss closed-door conversations. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking to the leaders summit by video link, made an urgent plea for the sum to purchase ammunition “as soon as possible,” making reference to a massive overnight drone strike over Ukraine as the war drags on.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.20-221224/https://www.ft.com/content/939b695c-7df8-412d-a430-df988c98f2ca

The discussions are an attempt to avoid the chaos of a unilateral US withdrawal from Nato, a fear sparked by President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to weaken or walk away from the transatlantic alliance that has protected Europe for almost eight decades.

The UK, France, Germany and the Nordics are among the countries engaged in the informal but structured discussions, according to four European officials involved. Their aim is to come up with a plan to shift the financial and military burden to European capitals and present it to the US ahead of Nato’s annual leaders’ summit in The Hague in June.

The proposal would include firm commitments on increasing European defence spending and building up military capabilities, in an effort to convince Trump to agree to a gradual handover that would allow the US to focus more on Asia.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.20-190214/https://www.ft.com/content/5bc7c761-e6c7-4459-892c-fb72c54212d1

Relations were dented earlier this week when the European Commission revealed it would exclude British arms companies from a new €150bn defence spending fund until London and Brussels agreed a fresh security pact.

Asked about the move, Starmer said he was “really pleased that the EU has brought together such a successful package”, saying Britain wanted to play a full part in boosting Europe’s collective self defence.

He said he was speaking to Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, “pretty well all the time” and was looking for ways to “take this forward together”. Starmer wants to negotiate a security pact with the EU as part of his wider “reset” of post Brexit relations.

EU officials have sought to downplay the UK’s exemption from the initiative and stress their desire to swiftly sign a deal with London that would allow British companies to take part, in a bid to rectify the irritation at Brussels’ Wednesday announcement.

“There is good momentum with the Brits on defence and we want to keep that moving,” said one of the EU officials, adding that bilateral discussions with senior UK counterparts had taken place since the publication of the terms.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.20-174959/https://www.ft.com/content/06d9949f-3cd8-42c2-873f-af2acdee0f42

Donald Trump has raised the possibility of the US taking control of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, as part of his push to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The president told his Ukrainian counterpart on Wednesday that US expertise could help manage the plants, with American ownership providing “the best protection” for the country’s energy infrastructure, according to a US readout.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later clarified that their discussion focused solely on a facility currently under Russian control: the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest. 

Three years after Russian troops seized the facility, raising fears of a Chernobyl-style disaster in Ukraine, Trump’s proposal has returned it to the spotlight as a potential pillar of a peace deal — one that also seeks to recoup the billions of dollars in US military aid.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.20-191258/https://www.newsweek.com/britain-issues-travel-warning-us-deportations-2047878

The United Kingdom has updated its travel advice for British citizens planning to visit the United States, warning of potential arrest or detention if travelers fail to comply with entry requirements.

It comes amid President Donald Trump's large-scale crackdown on illegal immigration.

"You should comply with all entry, visa and other conditions of entry. The authorities in the U.S. set and enforce entry rules strictly. You may be liable to arrest or detention if you break the rules," the guidance reads.

Initial event: https://feddit.org/post/9289353

Weapon identification: https://feddit.org/post/9460842

Serbian article: https://birn.rs/srpska-policija-zvucno-oruzje-migranti-sombor/

German article: https://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20250320_OTS0008/serbische-polizei-testete-schallkanone-2023-zuerst-an-gefluechteten

DeepL:

Now, according to research by the respected Balkan Insight Research Network it is clear that the same sound cannon was already used in November 2023 against refugees in the suburbs of the city of Sombor, which is not far from the Croatian and Hungarian border. The device was used at a time when the Serbian police, under pressure from the EU, began to use the the Serbian-Hungarian border as a route for refugees and forced deported thousands of refugees to the south of the country. Prior to this known to have been great political pressure from Austria.

“People ran in panic”

“On November 7, 2023, at 1 p.m., 35 refugees - mainly men, but also children and men, but also children and women - tried to flee across the fields from an to flee in panic from an abandoned house. Across the fields you could hear a loud, pain-inducing noise across the fields,” BIRN writes, referring to aid organizations aid organizations that documented the incident in detail at the time. documented the incident in detail at the time. “During the panic, one of the policemen behind the house where the refugees were staying emitted a loud noise from a device that was more reminiscent of a weapon. It can be assumed that the aim of the action was to catch the fugitives more quickly,” the BIRN article continues.

The LRAD 450 XL sonic weapon

After the demonstrations in Belgrade at the latest, it is clear that it was probably the LRAD 450 XL sonic device that was used against demonstrating Serbian students. “It's a textbook example of how police violence, which initially only affects refugees, has an internal impact and later affects society as a whole. This is exactly what we have been warning against for years, that the dismantling of the rights of refugees also means the dismantling of the rights of all people begins,” says Petar Rosandić, chairman of SOS Balkan Route.

Archived link

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Ukraine has urgently called on the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to address Russia’s illegal deportation of 19,546 Ukrainian children and the disappearance of an additional 1,700, all victims of Russian aggression.

Estimates suggest that 1.6 million Ukrainian children remain under occupation or in Russia. To date, only around 600 have been repatriated, with each case being a complex and arduous struggle.

The Russian authorities are not only separating these children from their national identity — they are forcibly imposing Russian culture on them, militarising them, and grooming them for future conflicts.

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Children in occupied territories are trained to assemble firearms and operate drones within Russian military youth units

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Thousands remain ensnared in this system, with some boys, abducted by Russia and sent to fight against their homeland upon turning 18.

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“Forced mobilisation had begun in the city. Draft papers were delivered to every house, and Maksym’s friends were being grabbed right off the streets. One of them was forced to sign a contract with the Russian army under the threat of 25 years in prison,” [head of the Save Ukraine NGO Mykol] Kuleba [wrote] in story of one of the Ukrainian boys.

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Ukraine’s youth face an existential crisis — threatened by immediate physical harm, severely disrupted education, and the erosion of their national identity

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• Cyber security firm ESET discovered a cyberespionage operation by the China-aligned MirrorFace advanced persistent threat (APT) group against a Central European diplomatic institute in relation to upcoming Expo 2025 in Japan.
• MirrorFace has refreshed both its tooling and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
• To our knowledge, this represents the first time that MirrorFace has targeted a European entity.
• MirrorFace has started using ANEL, a backdoor previously associated exclusively with APT10, and deployed a heavily customized variant of AsyncRAT, using a complex execution chain to run it inside Windows Sandbox.

"Known primarily for its cyberespionage activities against organizations in Japan, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time MirrorFace has shown intent to infiltrate a European entity," Eset says in the report.

The campaign was uncovered in Q2 and Q3 of 2024 and named Operation AkaiRyū (Japanese for RedDragon) by ESET; it showcases refreshed TTPs that ESET Research observed throughout last year.

“MirrorFace targeted a Central European diplomatic institute. To our knowledge, this is the first, and, to date, only time MirrorFace has targeted an entity in Europe,” says ESET researcher Dominik Breitenbacher, who investigated the AkaiRyū campaign.

MirrorFace operators set up their spearphishing attack by crafting an email message that references a previous, legitimate interaction between the institute and a Japanese NGO. During this attack, the threat actor used the upcoming World Expo 2025 – to be held in Osaka, Japan – as a lure. This further shows that even considering this new broader geographic targeting, MirrorFace remains focused on Japan and events related to it. Before the attack on this European diplomatic institute, MirrorFace targeted two employees at a Japanese research institute, using a malicious, password-protected Word document delivered in an unknown manner.

[...]

Here is an Open Letter to French MPs by the European Digital Rights, EDRi, (pdf) association.

In the midst of the media uproar over drug trafficking, a law on “drug trafficking” is passing through Parliament. In reality, this text does not only apply to the sale of narcotics and leads to a heavy reinforcement of the surveillance capacities of the intelligence and judicial police. It is one of the most repressive and dangerous texts of recent years. This law could notably give even more powers to repress activism.

This bill was adopted unanimously in the Senate, with the support of the Socialists, the Ecologists and the Communists, and will now be discussed in the National Assembly. La Quadrature du Net is calling for urgent mobilization to raise awareness of the dangers of this text and to push left-wing parties to reject it.

[...]

• The so-called “Drug Trafficking” law undermines the protection of encrypted messaging services (such as Signal or WhatsApp) by requiring the implementation of backdoors for the police and intelligence services.
• By modifying the legal regime for organized crime, applicable in other cases, this law does not only apply to drug trafficking. It can even be used to surveil activists.
• The safe-deposit box, a provision of the law, makes secret the documents in a file detailing the use of surveillance techniques during an investigation. This violates the right to defend oneself and prevents the public from knowing the extent of the surveillance capabilities of the judicial police.
• The text provides for authorizing the police to remotely activate the microphones and cameras of fixed and mobile connected devices (computers, telephones, etc.) to spy on individuals.
• It extends the authorization to use “black boxes”, a technique for analyzing data from all our communications and exchanges on the Internet for the purpose of “fighting delinquency and organized crime”.
• The police will be able to tighten its policy of censoring Internet content by extending it to publications related to the use and sale of drugs. The risks of abuse of freedom of expression are therefore amplified.

[...]