Request to cross-check lists of surveillance targets pending
A request by two prosecutors last year to check whether the 92 people targeted by illegal spyware Predator had also been surveilled by the country’s intelligence service, EYP, remains pending four months after it was submitted to the independent authority responsible for privacy, ADAE.
Cross-checking the two lists would likely confirm or disprove the allegations of the existence of a “single center” that tracked people simultaneously through Predator and EYP, which is one of the questions lying at the center of Greece’s wiretapping scandal.
Soon after prosecutors Angeliki Triantafillou and Konstantinos Spyropoulos submitted the request twice to ADAE in September and October 2023, Supreme Court Prosecutor Georgia Adeilini ordered them to hand over the case file to Deputy Prosecutor Achilleas Zisis, citing delays in the completion of the probe.
According to sources, journalist Thanasis Koukakis – a target of surveillance through both Predator and EYP – sent a letter to ADAE in early February, stating that although four months have passed, the authority has not looked at the names and has therefore not informed Zisis, about the results of the audit.
ADAE responded a month later, saying that Zisis and the judicial authorities are solely responsible for checking the list, the same sources said.
The espionage scandal broke out in the summer of 2022 when Socialist leader Nikos Androulakis discovered an attempted wiretap on his phone with malicious spyware, followed by the revelation he had also been under surveillance by the state spy service. Investigations launched by ADAE and the Hellenic Data Protection Authority (HDPA) and reports in the investigative press revealed that Predator had been planted on the phones of an ever-expanding network of politicians and journalists, company executives and other prominent individuals.
