So Just Who is Bugging Greece?

There is an extraordinary story breaking in Greece at the moment, concerning the wiretapping of mobile phones.

On February 2, three Greek ministers held a press conference to reveal what the government had kept secret for nearly a year: that a sophisticated, self-concealing software parasite had been recording mobile phone conversations of the Greek prime minister, his wife, the foreign minister, the defense minister and 100 other Vodafone subscribers from before the 2004 Athens Olympics until March 2005, when the bug was removed.

Magistrate Giorgos Aktipis was given the task, last Friday, of discovering who tapped the phones of key government and defence officials and how they managed to do it without being caught. Aktipis has been instructed to look into, not just the breach of privacy laws, but also the possibility that espionage was involved and that state secrets were compromised.

Most chillingly of all, an employee of Vodafone has committed suicide after his resignation request was denied. On British radio (FiveLive) it is being reported that friends of the dead man, known only as KT, are calling people from hiding places to say that the man did not commit suicide but was murdered. The man was one of very few individuals with the required access needed to fit the software.

Vodafone have denied there is any linkage between the suicide and the wiretapping scandal. No-one in Greece appears to believe this.

A Greek government spokesman has insisted that Greece is in no way accusing the United States. The US Embassy and State Department have refused to comment. The Greek justice minister sensibly reminded everyone that this could be a provokatsia. British and Israeli security interests resemble America's. Perhaps Mossad had maliciously designed its eavesdropping to incriminate the United States if discovered.

For many Greeks, however, the list--Olympics security officials, senior bureaucrats, journalists, Middle Easterners and radical leftists--looked like a snapshot of US intelligence preoccupations during the 2004 Olympics.

If this turns out to be true, then we have to conclude there's no-one George Bush won't wiretap. His own allies, American citizens, the list appears to be endless.

Related Articles:

An Olympian Scandal.

Vodaphone Embroiled in Greek Phone-Tapping Scandal

Tags: Greece, wiretapping, Geirge, Bush, Scandal,