The phone-tapping scandal may determine the outcome of the next election in Greece. It ought not to reverse the changes made to the institutional support around the prime minister.
WIRETAPPING
The board of the Athens Bar Association (DSA) has voted by a two-thirds majority to “express its absolute and categorical opposition” to the issuing and the content of a legal opinion from the country’s chief prosecutor on the wiretapping affair.
Sixteen prominent constitutional law professors have strongly criticised Greece’s chief prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos after he issued a controversial legal opinion arguing that the independent authority responsible for privacy, ADAE, cannot conduct audits of telecommunication companies to find out who is under surveillance by the country’s intelligence agency.
The Supreme Court prosecutor’s opinion issued on Tuesday that the Independent Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE) no longer has the authority to respond to requests by citizens regarding whether they were put under surveillance for national security reasons is creating a new landscape regarding the political management of issues arising from allegations of interception of communications of politicians and journalists.
The head of the independent Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE) said on Tuesday that “no state body can exercise any form of preventive control or prudential supervision over the authority.”
At the center of the wiretapping case and with both sides of the political system trying to weaponize him, the chairman of the Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE), Christos Rammos, has been walking a careful tightrope.
Two Greek prosecutors investigating all allegations of illegal electronic surveillance of dozens of individuals in Greece have submitted a request to US authorities for judicial assistance.
In response to requests made by independent MEP Giorgos Kyrtsos and journalist Tasos Telloglou, the Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE) conducted an investigation at Cosmote on Friday which, sources confirmed, showed decrees were issued for lifting the confidentiality of their phone communications.
The developments in the investigations into allegations of wiretapping of communications of politicians and others took on a more dramatic turn on Tuesday as prosecutors handling the cases ordered raids on companies linked to the Predator malware.
The Athens offices of Intellexa, which sells the Predator spyware in Greece, and Krikel, an ICT and electronic security systems provider, were among six companies raided by police as part of the investigation into the wiretapping affair on Tuesday.
Fresh from a tense clash in Parliament with opposition leader Alexis Tsipras over revelations of widespread wiretapping, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is counting on the economy, including a possible upgrade of Greece’s debt to investment grade early next year, to help him in the runup to a likely double election in a few months’ time.
The leader of Greece’s leftist opposition on Monday urged Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to resign amid a phone tapping scandal still under investigation.
MPs on Friday approved legislation banning commercial spyware and reforming rules for legally-sanctioned wiretaps following allegations that senior government officials and journalists had been targeted by shadowy surveillance software.
Greece’s parliament on Friday passed a bill reforming the country’s intelligence service (EYP) and banning the sale of spyware as the government tries to mitigate the impact of a phone tapping scandal still under investigation.
It was no holds barred during Thursday’s debate in Parliament of a new bill on the National Intelligence Agency (EYP), which was, unsurprisingly, focused on the wiretapping affair, even though specific evidence was not presented.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the leader of the opposition, SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras, clashed in Parliament on Thursday during a debate on a bill on surveillance and wiretapping.
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