By Sokol Bregu
TIRANA, Albania – In Albania, where traditional media and social networks have a major influence on shaping public opinion, violations of privacy are increasingly becoming a serious legal and social problem. The publication of photographs, videos, conversations or personal information can expose an individual to uncontrolled public attention, turning their private life into an object of discussion, prejudice and collective judgement. In many cases, the mass sharing of such material is driven not by a genuine public interest, but by curiosity, the hunt for sensation and the tendency to judge the actions of others without fully knowing the circumstances. For the individual, the consequences are damage to their dignity, reputation and peace of mind, while the uncontrolled spread of information makes it difficult to restore things to the way they were. This phenomenon, on a scale previously unknown in Albania, raises a fundamental question: how far can freedom of expression extend in informing the public without violating the individual’s right to respect for their private life?
The cases that exposed the problem
Albania confronted this situation most sharply with the recent publication of intimate videos of several artists. This was not the first such case. It followed a series of publications of erotic videos and footage of various people, filmed on mobile phones, mostly in the streets of the capital.
The earlier cases passed without a broad reaction, as the people involved were ordinary individuals rather than public figures. However, some of those whose photos or videos were published suffered serious health consequences, and in some cases, driven by despair, harmed themselves.
The spread of these videos raises the question of whether there is any way to rein in the digital mob, which is becoming one of the greatest threats to personal privacy. In Albania, violating someone else’s privacy is often perceived not as a violation, but as entertainment. The mechanism is familiar: a person trusts someone and records something they would later wish did not exist. But the material is no longer in their hands, because someone else decides to expose and share it. A photo can be deleted from one phone, but not necessarily from thousands of other devices, because the internet does not forget. The question remains whether there are ways to protect oneself from this.
The tools exist, the institutional response does not
Technology expert Besmir Semanaj says:
“The tools exist and they are free. Today, the major platforms give every photo or video a ‘digital fingerprint’ and automatically block it whenever someone tries to upload it again. Services such as StopNCII.org do this without sending the material anywhere. Google removes intimate images published without consent from its search results. In Europe, an authority that acts within the first few hours, together with the cyber police and the platforms, can stifle a piece of content before it turns into a phenomenon. In Albania, we saw the opposite. When the intimate videos of several female artists began circulating massively at the end of September, the police’s first reaction was that there were no criminal proceedings. The reason: the victims had not yet filed a complaint. So while the material was spreading across thousands of phones, the state was waiting for the victim herself, at the most humiliating moment of her life, to come knocking on its door. The Commissioner for Personal Data Protection issued a statement calling on news portals and users to stop sharing the material. An appeal, not an order. Meanwhile, two days later, 18 videos were still live on a single website. That is not protection. That is commentary from the stands.”
According to Semanaj, this was a continuation of the apathy that institutions had already shown in the past. In his view, this is not the first case:
“In 2021, the salaries and personal data of more than 600,000 Albanians were leaked online from state databases. That same year, a database with the details of hundreds of thousands of voters circulated on social networks and messaging apps. The Prime Minister apologised. But no one managed to remove those files from circulation. Institutions that cannot even protect the data they hold themselves are in no position to protect citizens’ privacy when it is stolen by someone else. So the problem is not technology. The problem is a state that reacts with statements, waits for complaints when it should act on its own initiative, has no functioning agreements with platforms for rapid takedowns, and does not tell victims what tools are available to them. Until this changes, the burden remains on us. Anyone who receives such material and forwards it is not a bystander, but a co-author of the harm. If institutions do not break the chain, each of us can at least refuse to be the next link,” he explains.
The law on paper and its application in practice
Privacy concerns are not limited to the sharing of material by individuals. In its report on the recent student protests, the Ombudsman (People’s Advocate) listed the searching of phones among its concerns. The report states:
“Some minors and adults reported that they had been asked to unlock their mobile phones and allow their personal data to be searched, without a court order, and even when no charges had been brought by the prosecution. This once again reveals the wide gap that exists, not only in society but in the country’s system as a whole, when it comes to privacy.”
Former Serious Crimes prosecutor Eugen Beci analyses Albania’s legal framework and notes that the basic guarantees for the protection of private life are clearly enshrined in the Constitution and in the Code of Criminal Procedure. In his view, the letter of the law does offer protection, but the real challenge lies in the pace at which technology and the digital space are evolving. He says:
“Recent procedural challenges have shown that the original legislation needed rigorous testing and in-depth constitutional interpretation to close the gaps in its practical application. To understand whether the system is prepared, it is enough to look at how the seizure of computers and smartphones is handled. The common practice of the prosecution has often been mass, unconditional seizure: a direct violation of personal data, without clear filters and with weak legal reasoning. This inertia was dealt a fundamental blow by Constitutional Court Decision No. 44/2025, which set a new and necessary standard for digital privacy in criminal investigations, creating a key precedent that requires a balance to be struck between the interests of an investigation and the fundamental rights of the individual.”
The question remains whether courts and prosecution offices are truly prepared to apply this procedure in accordance with both the letter and the spirit of the law. Beci observes:
“Experience in the courtroom shows that there is still a great deal of resistance. The prosecution often tends to follow the old and easier path, treating privacy safeguards as procedural obstacles rather than as core principles of due process. The courts, for their part, although they now have clear constitutional guidance, are not infrequently hesitant to proactively sanction these violations, which means that the main burden of upholding these standards falls entirely on the defence. We can say that Albania is shaping the right legislation and case law on privacy, but implementation remains in a difficult phase of transition. The readiness of the justice system is not measured by the laws written on paper, but by the willingness of prosecutors and judges to abandon the automatic use of coercive measures and to respect fundamental rights in every proceeding, as an obligation and not as an option,” he concludes.
The Strasbourg standard
For European countries that faced the same problem earlier, the direction has been set by the European Court of Human Rights, which plays an important role in defining the boundaries between freedom of expression and the protection of privacy. The Court has stressed that the mere fact that the public is interested in a person’s life does not automatically make that information a matter of general interest.
The best-known case is that of Princess Caroline von Hannover, who challenged the publication in German magazines of photographs showing her in her daily life, outside her official functions. After the German courts did not fully uphold her claims, she took the case to Strasbourg. The legal question was simple: can the media justify publishing private photographs solely on the grounds that the person is well known and the public is curious about their life? On 24 June 2004, the ECtHR found a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to respect for private life. The Court stressed that publication intended merely to satisfy public curiosity does not necessarily contribute to a debate of general interest.
The role of AMA
In Albania, it is impossible to stop an individual who comes across such material on the digital platforms available to them from becoming part of the crowd. But the publication in the media of any material that violates a person’s privacy can be curbed. Here, the Audiovisual Media Authority (AMA) plays an important role in stopping or limiting mass violations of privacy. Much depends on the type of violation, but AMA has legal powers when it comes to media content, online publications or the unauthorised dissemination of private data and material. The basic principle is that the public’s right to be informed gives no one the right to violate a person’s private life.
AMA Chair Armela Krasniqi says:
“AMA’s Broadcasting Code, adopted on 10 July 2023, sets out these obligations in concrete terms. In particular, the provision on ‘The right to privacy and personal data protection’ stipulates that audiovisual media service providers shall respect the private and family life, home, health and correspondence of every person; it establishes that disseminating information to the public, including photographs or footage from private life without the consent of the person concerned, is acceptable only when the public interest outweighs that person’s right to privacy and/or personal data protection; and it requires that the processing and publication of personal data be linked to the purpose of the publication and not go beyond it. AMA has used its legal powers to prevent and address cases in which media content exceeds the limits of the public interest and violates citizens’ fundamental rights, in line with its competences and the legal procedures in force. In this context, the Authority has also stepped up its cooperation with the digital platforms TikTok and X, through communication and coordination mechanisms aimed at addressing harmful or illegal content more quickly, particularly when it violates users’ privacy, safety and dignity.”
Krasniqi concludes that the public interest should not be confused with public curiosity, and that the responsibility of the media and digital platforms remains essential to ensuring an information environment that respects fundamental rights and democratic values.
Legal remedies available to victims
Albanian legislation offers several avenues for resolving such cases. A person can seek compensation in court for non-pecuniary damage under Article 625 of the Civil Code. If there is also provable financial loss, they can claim pecuniary damage as well, provided the legal conditions are met. Article 647/a sets out criteria for assessing damage related to harm to a person’s honour, personality or reputation. The most forceful remedy remains a criminal complaint, as some of these offences carry prison sentences.
The forgotten link: the public
When someone enters another person’s private space without permission, records it, steals it or shares it, the moral problem does not lie in the fact that someone had an intimate life, but in the fact that someone else decided that this intimate life could belong to the public. Here, technology becomes a test of human character. The question is no longer only whether a piece of material can be viewed, but whether anyone has the right to view it, and whether, knowing that it was shared without consent, they become part of the violation.
What happens to a person’s dignity when a private moment of theirs becomes entertainment for millions? This is the paradox of the digital age: technology has given us the ability to record everything, but not the right to publish everything. Technical possibility is not the same as moral right. Public debate often focuses on the person who stole the material, the one who published it and the platform that allowed it to circulate, but one link in the chain is overlooked: the public.
Albania has already built an almost complete legal framework for the protection of privacy. Yet the issue is not the creation of new rules, but guaranteeing individuals effective protection against unjustified public exposure. This requires clearer accountability, more effective avenues of redress and a fair balance between freedom of expression and respect for private life.
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This text was produced within the framework of the MediaLit project, implemented by the Centre for Civic Education (CGO) in partnership with the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in North Macedonia, the Tirana Centre for Journalistic Excellence in Albania, and the Atlantic Initiative in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The project is funded by the European Union and co-financed by the Ministry of Regional and Investment Development and Cooperation with NGOs of the Government of Montenegro. The content of this text is the sole responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of CGO, the partner organisations, the European Union, or the Ministry.
