The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is not concerned about the coordinated hacker attack on Hungarian conservative news portals, and it has also turned a blind eye to the dubious database of the DatAdat phishing group, which is linked to a former leftist prime minister.

We sent our inquiry to the OSCE on Wednesday, as there were several indications that the left is trying to influence the outcome of Sunday’s Hungarian general elections through electoral fraud. However, the OSCE seems to turn a blind eye when such suspicions are raised, and they refused to respond to V4NA’s questions. We were curious to know what their delegation – sent to Hungary to monitor the election campaign – had found out about the coordinated foreign cyber-attack of 28 March, which primarily affected several right-wing portals and could even be used to influence the general elections.

We also inquired what the delegation had managed to uncover about the illegal database of more than a million people that the Hungarian left had built with the help of the DatAdat phishing group, which is linked to former Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai.

As V4NA reported earlier, the opposition primaries may have been influenced, or even decided, by former Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai and his circles via certain data analysis and campaign consultancy firms that he had set up jointly with his former intelligence minister, Adam Ficsor. Since then, the biggest and most wide-scale election fraud of the last 30 years has been committed, when leftist campaign centre operators reached around one million people were via SMS messages. The illegally obtained data set consists of downloaded phone numbers linked to names from Facebook profiles, and contact details extracted from banking and commercial databases. It has also been revealed that the group has strong links to the left wing of the US Democratic Party and that the group is „profiling” voters without their knowledge or consent.

„If this information is confirmed, it is another form of interference in the electoral process, and the perpetrators must be held accountable immediately,” the director of the international law office of the Polish research centre Ordo Iuris told the Hungarian Magyar Nemzet newspaper. Weronika Przebierala has arrived in Hungary as part of an international observation team to monitor the Hungarian elections scheduled for this Sunday. The group has also been informed about the discarded ballot papers in Transylvania.

„We should not underestimate such cases, every incident must be investigated in detail to determine whether it is a case of forgery or provocation,”

Ms Przebierala told the daily Magyar Nemzet. The director also commented on the hacker attack against right-wing Hungarian news portals, saying

„all such incidents should be equally condemned, regardless of the media product that falls victim to them. No one’s right to choose the source from which they obtain information should be questioned. Denying this right, especially during an election campaign, is an extremely dangerous incident. In addition, we understand that the perpetrator felt rather competent to decide what was and was not true, when he qualified the hacked websites and pages in a derogatory way,”

the member of the international monitoring team added. She also condemned the fact that on Wednesday, Fidesz’s website was hacked by unknown perpetrators, making one of the main communication channels of the governing party inaccessible in the tail end of the campaign. „This is also a serious interference in the electoral process: the closer it gets to election day, the more serious it is to deprive voters of the opportunity to be informed. It is obvious that the campaign plays a major role in shaping the voters’ decision,” Ms Przebierala emphasiszed. Magyar Nemzet also asked the director about the addition of many new leftist-liberal delegates to the OSCE’s monitoring group. According to Ms Przebierala, OSCE is an internationally recognized organization, whose task is to report on election observation missions around the world. It is not in itself negative that the number of delegation members has increased.

„However, the OSCE’s interim report on Hungary raises doubts, as its authors often refer to unnamed sources. What’s even more concerning is that they adopt the opinions of a political party when criticising the Hungarian electoral system. In my opinion, it is essential not to forget the role of the election observer, which is – first and foremost – a great responsibility, because it strengthens democratic institutions, builds public confidence in the electoral process and helps to stop electoral abuses,”

 

the expert said.