Turek apologises to Seznam.cz by court order, then blames it again

Czech MP Filip Turek, from the Motoristé party, has published an apology to Seznam.cz on Facebook, after earlier accusing the company of secretly letting its employees access users’ email. He published it by order of the Prague Municipal Court, but immediately followed his post with fresh attacks on the company.

What the court ruled

In mid-September, the Prague Municipal Court ordered Turek to send Seznam.cz a written apology in strictly defined wording within three days of the ruling taking effect, to publish a copy of it in a separate post on his personal Facebook profile, and to pay the court costs.

The lawsuit was triggered by remarks Turek made on 28 April on the programme “Strictly Confidential” on the Xaver Live channel: “We all know perfectly well that literally everyone who works at Seznam looks into your mailbox there, it’s not safe…” At the time, the MP also said he himself had undergone a “digital detox” and urged viewers to do the same, noting that the company losing “several tens or hundreds of thousands” of visitors would also “have some effect.”

How the company responded to the accusations

Seznam.cz rejected the accusations. According to company spokesperson Aneta Kapucianová, the Czech internet leader treats the security of users’ data as an absolute priority, and all data is stored in the company’s own data centres located in Czechia.

An apology with a fresh jab

Turek himself called the outcome of the proceedings a “technical loss” — meaning one handed down without his participation — and said that over the weekend he had preferred to work rather than go to court. At the same time, he wrote that during that period various ministries had managed to “cut” hundreds of millions of crowns in state spending on media campaigns, one of the recipients of which had been Seznam’s media outlets. “That money is gone. It must hurt, we’re terrible, I know,” the MP wrote.

Seznam.cz does not consider such a post to be compliance with the court’s ruling. Kapucianová said the company has still not received a signed written apology, and the required post on Turek’s Facebook page has never appeared. The company is now waiting for the ruling to take legal effect — if the MP fails to comply, the case will be referred for enforced execution. Turek’s Sunday activity on social media, the spokesperson said, changes nothing in this regard.

Another apology — to environmentalists

This week Turek also sent a formal apology, via the state electronic document system, to the environmental organisation Hnutí Duha. The reason was remarks in which he linked the organisation to deaths during floods and called its activists “parasites” who need to be “exterminated.”

Source: seznamzpravy.cz