Wide access to wiretap centers
The watchdog investigating the recent case of phone tapping is due to issue a report today, which is expected to indicate that numerous people had access to the centers used to eavesdrop on some 100 cell phones and that an opportunity to track down the spies was missed, sources told Sunday’s Kathimerini. The Communications Privacy Protection Authority (ADAE) will hand its second interim report over to Parliament’s Institutions and Transparency Committee after launching a probe into the affair in February. One of the key points that ADAE will raise, according to sources, is that a large number of people had access to Vodafone’s four communications centers, which were used to listen in on conversations. Personnel from Vodafone Greece and Ericsson Hellas had access to the centers both in person and remotely with the use of specific passwords. This discovery makes it more difficult to find out if the eavesdroppers had help from employees of the two mobile phone companies, as there are more potential collaborators than previously thought. Sources said that ADAE has also made a significant discovery regarding the pay-as-you-go mobile phones used to receive the tapped conversations, which were then recorded on computers. The watchdog’s experts found that the so-called shadow phones were still active after the spy software was shut down on March 8 last year. This means that their location could have been tracked down and perhaps the identity of the spies revealed. Until now, the shutting down of the spy software by Vodafone has been cited as the reason that the source of the wiretaps could not be located. Vodafone has been criticized for switching off the software but the company’s CEO Giorgos Koronias said he took the action because of fears for national security when he was told that the prime minister, members of the Cabinet and top defense officials were being tapped. ADAE has been unable to pinpoint when the eavesdropping began, but is confident it started before the Athens Olympics in August 2004. Its final report is due after Easter.
