Suriname Media owners complain of ‘organized’ cyber attacks

Suriname media owners have complained of increased criminal cyber activities and have hinted at the possibility of approaching the government for assistance to formally bring the issues to the attention of the owners of Facebook and its parent company, Meta.

“Since Surinamese people have a predominantly ‘Facebook culture’ and FB is an important platform to be informed by the media, it is feared that they will be deprived of essential information if the pages of the local media are taken offline,” the media owners have warned.

So far, two forms of attacks have been observed. In the first form, social media channels, email addresses and other accounts are hacked and completely taken over by third parties.

Speaking at a news conference, the media owners said they fear the attacks will increase, resulting in Facebook pages being suspended or taken offline due to the unjustified mass reports.

They told reporters that from their research, the affected companies have been able to conclude that these are organized, targeted attacks, particularly with regard to the reporting of news items on Facebook.

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But the media owners and senior executives say they remain in the dark about who is responsible for these organized attacks.

Jaswant Gajadien of Sun WebTV said that after a cyber-attack, pornographic videos appeared on the company’s internet platforms. Gajadien said an “innocent” police search notice with a photo of a lost sheep as an illustration had also been removed.

Facebook did not respond to questions about why the message had been removed, but regarding the adult videos, Facebook found nothing wrong with that.

The media owners said in at least one instance, there has been no live streaming for a month.

Nita Ramcharan of Starnieuws said that action has also been taken against members of the public who have been prevented from posting opinions because Facebook has imposed sanctions.

Starnieuws was recently banned and is not allowed to stream live broadcasts for a month after Facebook removed an article with legitimate, truthful information about a matter of the National Development Bank and labelled it as a scam and fraud.

“If you can no longer express yourself because a page has been reported or taken off the air, it means that it becomes a big problem for everyone,” Ramcharan said, adding that the fact that  Starnieuws cannot stream live on Facebook is a “serious limitation”.

The media companies say they are unaware of the rules being violated because Facebook does not provide clarity, noting that some of the messages blocked include police reports.

Sam Blankendaal of ABC Radio and TV’s news service reported that the company’s FB page and website were hacked and taken over by hackers and that email addresses were also “stolen”.

Blankendaal said an attack on its Instagram page was thwarted at the last minute and that the company has taken various measures to increase its cybersecurity.

Due to the internet harassment, Rasonic Media said it lost its digital archive that was built up over the past 30 years.

“It is a robbery of your archive. Rasonic no longer has an archive on the internet,” said Firdaus Ishaak of Rasonic Media.

Vishmohanie Thomas of the news website, Suriname Herald, hopes that the government will take note of the concern and cry for help from the media companies and “enter into conclave with Facebook if necessary”.

She said that not only media companies are affected by the harassment, but also citizens whose accounts are hacked or pages are reported.

The media owners say in the meantime, advice is being sought from “Facebook experts” on how to handle this issue that may also be brought to the US Embassy in Suriname, as the situation involves social media platforms of US companies.

“This is an attack on freedom of expression. You can no longer express yourself. You don’t know what to post,” said Rene Gompers of Starnieuws.

The media owners and executives say with the general elections due next year, they fear the situation could get worse if it is not dealt with.