FLASH
Shkruar nga Thoma Gëllçi
When Ilir Meta was prime minister, I participated in an official visit to Washington. During a meeting with the US Attorney General, Janet Reno, she asked: “How are you doing with cybercrime in Albania?”
I remember that during the communist era, when we only had corn bread in the village and had to have a strong friend in the city to buy some edible wheat bread, when the shelves of stores were "infested with locusts", when food stamps were distributed to homes in the cities and milk lines started at 1 am, etc., Albania won first place in the world for feeding the population.
We were hungry and had not seen a piece of meat for a long time, but the price consoled us: while we were the first in feeding the people, imagine for yourself in what poverty the bourgeois and revisionist world lived. So, the logic was simple: if we, in this state, were the first, then the others must be much worse off. And that was enough for us. We did not seek any other explanation.
This story came to mind when I heard the country's prime minister say that Albania ranked ninth in cybersecurity. I was surprised, to be honest, because we are still fresh in the eyes of the cyberattacks that have happened to us, that have stolen and exposed our intestines, that all citizens' IDs are online, that all salaries have gone online, and that government servers occasionally go down from unexpected attacks. Not long ago, we heard that hackers (of course always "Iranians" according to the official version) had attacked the servers of the Albanian parliament and taken control of the emails. According to reports, they had taken some data, but had not done any damage.
Surprised as I was, but also curious as someone who doesn't easily believe, I turned to the relevant source that gave us the 9th place. I opened the organization's website and expected this data to be wrong or misinterpreted. But no. It was there, clearly written: Albania in ninth place in the world for cybersecurity.
Here the interesting part begins.
Still curious, I started browsing further to see where other countries stood in this classification. Where did Japan stand, for example, the country known for its high technology. When we think of the word technology, a Japanese person immediately comes to mind. But according to the list, Japan is in 34th place. Australia in 21st place. Austria in 26th place. Croatia in 33rd place. Great Britain in 31st place. United States of America in 30th place. Bulgaria in 36th place and China in 67th place.
So, according to this classification, Albania is ahead of all of these. We have left the Greeks behind. They are in 24th place. The Italians are also behind us, in 20th place.
The Americans, as I said above, are in 30th place. The country that developed and invented the internet, artificial intelligence, that has Microsoft and Apple, that has Google and Tesla, that has the CIA and FBI, that has the largest banks and manages the entire world's dollar, that has the largest and strongest army in the world, is far behind Albania in the world ranking for cybersecurity.
This ranking is interesting.
I've been wondering for two days and I can't explain such a result. Even the example of the price of food for the population didn't help me at first. Because this is not about internal propaganda, but about an international classification. So, someone outside of us has said this.
So, how is it explained?
When suddenly I remembered a story when I myself worked in the Prime Minister's Office and was an advisor to the Prime Minister. At the time when Ilir Meta was Prime Minister, I participated in an official visit to Washington. During a meeting with the US Attorney General, Janet Reno, she asked: "How are you doing with cybercrime in Albania?"
The answer was straightforward: we had no cybercrime.
She was surprised. “Very good,” she said. “Bravo. We have a lot of problems with cybercrime here. Good on you for solving this.” In fact, the reason was simple: there was almost no technology. The internet was very limited, the systems were manual, and the digital space was minimal. So, there was no cybercrime because there was no ground for it to occur.
And this is where ninth place starts to make sense.
Because maybe the problem is not that we are stronger than others. Maybe the problem is that the way we measure “security” has no connection to what citizens experience every day. Maybe what is evaluated are strategies on paper, documents, laws, structures, national plans, reports and presentations. And these, as we know, we do very well.
So, it can happen that on paper we are very secure, while in practice we have daily problems.
Like then with bread.
Back then, we had the world's best price for food, while people were waiting in line for milk.
Today we rank ninth in the world for cybersecurity, while data leaks online and systems crash.
Only the field changes.
The logic remains the same.
However, after all this research, one question remained in my mind: why didn't they give us first place?
Lini një Përgjigje