Online disinformation, a topic on the CSAT table

Nicușor Dan announced that the topic of disinformation circulating rapidly online will be discussed in the next meeting of the Supreme Council for National Defense (CSAT), which is scheduled to take place by the end of the month. The President of Romania drew attention to the fact that the state’s reactions must be rapid, as false information reaches millions of people in just a few hours.

Asked on Wednesday evening in Odessa what the Romanian state can do in the face of the wave of online disinformation, President Nicușor Dan declared that the subject would be included on the CSAT agenda.

“There will be a discussion in CSAT, we will have a meeting by the end of this month and we will discuss, formally or informally, this issue. Certainly, we must be able to respond quantitatively. It is useless for you to respond in three hours if in those three hours the information reached three or four million people. It is not clear that you, coming in three hours, will manage to come up with the real information”, stated Nicușor Dan.

On December 28, 2024, CSAT analyzed “possible risks to national security generated by the actions of state and non-state cyber actors on IT&C infrastructures”, just four days after the first round of the presidential elections.

Among the risks discussed was the manipulation of TikTok algorithms in favor of candidate Călin Georgescu, who came first in the first round. Based on the reports presented during the meeting, on December 4, it was decided to declassify the documents, and later the Prosecutor General’s Office announced that it had filed an ex officio complaint regarding possible “electoral crimes and money laundering”.

On December 6, the Constitutional Court decided to annul the first round of the presidential elections and resume the entire electoral process.