A political storm of the highest order has broken out in Greece over mass phone-tapping.
This follows revelations, at a special press-conference last Thursday in Athens by three top Greek government ministers, of a gigantic phone-tapping operation which started ‘before the Athens Olympics Games’ of 2004 and continued to early March 2005.
Government spokesperson, Theodoros Roussopoulos, stated that 100 mobile phones were tapped including those of the Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis, of four Cabinet ministers (Foreign Secretary and Deputy Secretary, Defence, Public Order and Justice), of the general staff of the Greek army, navy and airforce, of the police and secret services leadership, of an ex-defence minister, of the Mayor of Athens, of the European Union’s Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, of lawyers and individuals involved in the recent ‘17th November’ terrorist trial, of several journalists, of Arab and Palestinians living in Athens and of many left-wing and anti-war activists.
One of the mobile phones tapped belonged to a US Athens Embassy employee.
Roussopoulos stated that the tapping operation was carried out by ‘an unknown individual or individuals who used high technology’.
He said that the mobile phones were tapped through 14 ‘shadow phones’ which were positioned around the area of the US Embassy compound in central Athens and close to high-ground mobile phone masts.
These ‘shadow phones’ were connected to the tapped mobile phones through the central computer of Vodafone, the Greek subsidiary of the British firm.
Vodafone uses equipment and software provided by the Swedish firm SonyEricsson which a few years ago developed a hi-tech surveillance system for the Swedish government.
A similar system was installed at Vodafone to be used for ‘legal’ tappings ordered only by the Greek Public Persecutor, following an EU decision.
Russopoulos said that Vodafone informed the government three days after the location of the tappers’ software and that the company had not contacted the Independent Communications Safety Authority as they should have done by law.
But then Roussopoulos, as well as the other two Cabinet ministers, offered congratulations to Vodafone.
The tapping operation and the government’s position have produced an infuriating response from opposition parties and from the tapped persons who accuse the government of a cover up.
These persons read of the affair last Thursday morning in an Athens daily which carried the story hours before the Cabinet ministers’ press conference.
Journalists who saw the list of tapped persons circulated by the government, said that it was clearly ‘improvised and censored’.
These revelations once again confirm the incredible conspiracies by imperialist and capitalist state secret services and operatives who in the name of ‘security’ have illegally imposed various tapping networks, on top of and beyond the infamous Echelon, to spy on anyone they fancy.
This is a great lesson for the whole international working class movement and trade unions, anti-war and left-wing activists.
A number of tapped Greek journalists and anti-war activists said in press conferences held in Salonica and Athens that they would sue the Greek State and Vodafone.
This coming Thursday a protest demonstration is to be held at the USA Embassy in Athens. But this is an issue to be taken up by the whole working class and trade union movement which should demand that the GSEE (Greek TUC) organise action against the spying operations and the government’s cover up.
The revelations come at a time when the Greek government announced the Income Policy which offers meagre 2.5 per cent pay rises when the official inflation rate is almost 4 per cent.
It also coincides with the unprecedented refusal of the Greek bankers, publicly supported by the Finance Minister Alogoskoufis, to negotiate with the bank workers union, insisting on the scrapping of collective bargaining. The bank workers union was staging a 24-hour strike on Monday, 6th February.
In an incident last week the GSEE President Christos Polyzogopoulos and his aid were violently attacked in central Athens and badly beaten up by a group of people. The police have announced that two persons have been arrested.
Last Sunday the Athens daily Kathimerini, a staunch government supporter, revealed that sometime in 2003, that is prior to the Olympic Games in summer 2004, the then Greek social-democratic government, through the EYP secret services, had set up a special tapping group codenamed ‘Olaf’ headed by a Greek Army officer.
The newspaper says that this group might well be still in operation.
The Greek government since 2000 have signed agreements with the European Union, and possibly with the USA and NATO, allowing phone tapping operations for ‘security reasons’. In 2003 the Greek government formed a special ‘Security Centre’ for the Olympic Games with personnel from the USA, Israeli, Russian, Canadian, British and Australian secret services answerable to the NATO command who has taken over the Games’ security.
Examining magistrate Yiorghos Aktipis would now investigate the Vodafone tapping operations including the death of the company’s head of network Kostas Tsalikidis who committed suicide two days after the tapping operation was found out.
In a statement issued last Friday, Vodafone said that ‘no connection exists between the death of Tsalikidis and the tapping software’.
Vodafone have refused to offer an explanation for the destruction of the software nor why they waited three whole days to inform the government and not the Independent Authority.
