The Faculty of Law in Belgrade suddenly deleted the database of graduates from the website. Lazar Chows, the journalist who preserved the database, is now facing allegations that he is allegedly violating privacy rules.
The Serbian political and broader scene is teeming with purchased diplomas and doctorates transferred, there were even examples of people in positions simply claiming to have graduated somewhere even though they didn't.
These days it is a current example is RTS director Manja Grčić who got that important job even though her degree from England shouldn't be enough for it.
One of the remedies against fake diplomas or doctored resumes is simple transparency.
Let's say Faculty of Law in Belgrade has had a list of its graduates on its portal for years. Name, surname, year of enrollment and year of graduation were visible there.
And that means that, if someone says that he finished his law studies in Belgrade, anyone could check if it was true in a minute.
The list suddenly disappeared.
But this March, the Faculty of Law in Belgrade simply disabled the search without explanation. Many on the social network X suspected that this was because citizens and journalists were actively using the search to check certain real or alleged lawyers.
Lazar Chows, a journalist who specializes in files, now explains in his post on Patreon what he did then: "Since the administrators only temporarily grayed out the search, and did not disable it (the server still accepted POST requests without any problems), at first I thought that this was possibly a bug on the site as well legal.xyz I created a simple search page for the same data that the Faculty of Law diligently and regularly publishes itself."
However, just a few hours later, the connection of his new site with the database of the Faculty of Law was disabled.
But, as he writes, "with the best intentions" Choves has already saved all the data - that is, the entire database of Law graduates, starting with those who entered the faculty in 1983 until today. He connected the saved database with the site and thus the search still works on the address today legal.xyz
Mystical login
But that is not the end of attempts to remove this search from the light of day. As Chows reports, on Friday (April 17) he received an email from the hosting company that the site had been reported for allegedly improper storage of personal data.
"The person who reported this explained in very clear English what allegedly happened, but quoted the completely wrong articles of regulation," Chows writes. "It turns out that guys, even if they're lawyers, aren't very smart."
As he states, he sent answers to the allegations, explaining that the data is of public interest and that the authorized body - the Faculty of Law - has been publishing it for years.
"We'll see what happens, I'm optimistic that the hosting provider will take my side," Chows concludes.
More detailed information about who submitted the application and why exactly the Faculty of Law hides the list of graduates is not officially known. But whoever wants to guess, it will not be difficult for him to guess.
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