Tele2 refuses to reveal those who post hate speech

The Latvian telecommunications company SIA Tele2, which is 100% owned by the Swedish joint-stock company Tele2 Sverige Aktiebolag, avoids complying with a court decision to reveal those who post hate speech on the websites of SIA Mediju nams for the initiation of legal proceedings.

In September-October last year, the comments section of the www.nra.lv website of SIA Mediju nams was flooded with slogans and expressions containing hate speech. The publisher's reaction was lightning quick - hateful comments were captured and deleted from the site. SIA Mediju nams submitted an application to the Riga City Pārdaugava Court regarding the provision of evidence before filing a claim in court due to anonymous offensive comments on the website www.nra.lv. The court was provided with information on the posting times and other parameters of several hate speech comments.

Tele2 ignores the court

On November 10, 2020, Marita Šalta, Judge of the Riga City Pārdaugava Court, decided to satisfy the application of SIA Mediju nams for the issuance of evidence, imposing on SIA Tele2 the obligation to provide it by December 10, 2020. SIA Tele2 did not comply with the court decision. The court did not punish the company and extended the deadline for the execution of the decision until February 26.

SIA Mediju nams received a letter from SIA Tele2 that SIA Tele2 cannot fulfill the obligation set by the court, because it needs to obtain exact connection times and, if possible, also the port numbers with which the connections were made.

Disagreeing with the letter of SIA Tele2 and considering that the operator was provided with all the necessary parameters to identify the distributors of hate speech, SIA Mediju nams repeatedly applied to the court with a request to issue a writ of execution to submit it to the bailiff. The court granted the request and a writ of execution was issued.

What is important is that the court imposed an obligation on SIA Tele2 to provide the court with information about the user of a specific IP address. SIA Tele2 was provided with all the necessary information to comply with the relevant court decision, including connection times and port numbers. According to the norm of the Electronic Communications Law, to which SIA Tele2 itself refers, the electronic communications merchant must provide information about the user of the IP address if it is requested by a court in a civil case - thus in this case there are no obstacles to carry out the decision. There is no legal basis for the request of SIA Tele2 that the court in a civil case sends SIA Tele2 any additional information or collects any evidence to substantiate its request for information. The actions of SIA Tele2, not providing the information requested by the court, indicate the avoidance of the execution of the specific court decision, which is fully confirmed by the enforcement order issued by the court. Thus, the court also considers that the obligation to provide information imposed on SIA Tele2 has not been fulfilled without a legal basis and the execution of the decision must be performed compulsorily through a sworn bailiff.

Aigars Laurinovičs, the manager of the IT infrastructure solutions company SIA Cadence serving SIA Mediju nams, explained that SIA Tele2 should not have any technical problems to identify the culprits: “To be able to identify the end-user the IP address from which the entry was made and the time at which this entry was made are required, the port number for the ISP may serve as an additional element to facilitate the search through audit logs. Although the end-user uses a dynamic variable IP address assigned by the ISP for a fixed period of time, there should be no obstacle to identifying such an end-user, as this address is constant as long as the device is active in a particular data network segment, as also if, in accordance with regulatory enactments, the Internet Service Provider has performed the storage of audit records as a good and diligent owner - a good and diligent owner - within the meaning of the Civil and Commercial Laws, and a specific time is known when the activities have been performed. Of course, given the large amount of data that an ISP has to process, this investigation can be time-consuming, but it can still be done.”

What prevents revealing the culprits?

As SIA Mediju nams has accumulated positive experience in combating hate speech in cooperation with other communication operators and, considering that technical reservations for non-compliance with the court decision are not substantiated, Neatkarīgā asked Valdis Vancovičs, Chairman of the Board of SIA Tele2, whether SIA Tele2 is not allowed to disclose the identities of hate speech writers or is unable to do so; whether evasion of court decisions should be understood as supporting the reproduction of hate speech and is the broadcaster's public communication strategy; why it is so important for SIA Tele2 not to reveal the identities of hate speakers; whether SIA Tele2 is aware that failure to comply with the court decision, failure to fulfill the obligation imposed by the court may threaten criminal liability in accordance with Section 312, Paragraph one of the Criminal Law, and whether SIA Tele2 management (board and other responsible persons), in the name of SIA Tele2, by continuing to fail to comply with a court decision, is prepared for a possible criminal prosecution?

We received the following answers from the company: “Tele2 is a socially responsible company and operates in accordance with national laws. We do not and will not find acceptable hate speech or other offenses in either the digital or the real world, and we have always helped the authorities to detect and prevent such offenses.

We have always reacted and helped the Latvian law enforcement and law enforcement authorities to detect various offenders, and also in this case we are ready to do so in accordance with the law. On January 29, 2021, upon receiving the court request, Tele2 found that the request lacked all the necessary information. In response to this court request, on February 2, 2021, we have informed SIA Mediju nams and the court that dynamic IP addresses require accurate times and ports to provide accurate information about a particular user.

To date, Tele2 has not received a repeated court request specifying the necessary information about the user of the IP address. On February 10, 2021, we received a unilateral request from SIA Mediju nams to provide us with information to the court. Unfortunately, Tele2 does not have the right to provide information about the user of electronic communications services to third parties, even if it is a party to the relevant legal proceedings or to provide such information to a court in response to a request from a third party.

Section 68 of the Electronic Communications Law clearly stipulates that an electronic communications merchant is not entitled to disclose information regarding electronic communications services and their users, providing only certain exceptions to this prohibition. Pursuant to Section 71.2 of the Electronic Communications Law, an electronic communications merchant may issue information regarding the user of an IP address in a civil case upon the request of a court.

To sum up, we currently have legal restrictions on providing such information, but we are ready to do so as soon as these issues are resolved.

We would like to note that also in the summer and autumn of this year we implemented a social campaign for young people #SekoSev, which was directly aimed at negative comments on the Internet. By involving a number of well-known people in the campaign, we tried to encourage young people not to let negative comments on the Internet influence them. This campaign on social networks reached an audience of more than 1.5 million, while in traditional media it was about 1.8 million."

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