Prosecutor orders investigation into wiretapping allegations

Following the allegation of illegal wiretappings of political party phone lines, based on a report published in Ta Nea on Tuesday, it was reported that an Athens First Instance Court Prosecutor immediately ordered an investigation.

The article in "Ta Nea" was also featured on HellasFrappe in English. -  click HERE

The article states that following a two-week investigation by one of Ta Nea's reporters, where a Cryptophone 500 made by GSMK was used to locate suspect activity in the vicinity of the central offices of New Democracy and SYRIZA, it was discovered that there was such activity going on.

It has been reported that the Norwegian Aftenposten newspaper had used a similar device in one of its reports that were published last month.

Getting back to our story, from the 17,371 readings that Ta Nea carried out, it recorded around 193 “very suspicious” events, along with 64 “serious threats”, 78 “medium threats” and 263 “low threats”. After the publication of the article on Tuesday though, it appears that the wiretaps have “gone silent”.

According to an article in To Vima: Security experts have explained that quite often IMSI catchers are used to monitor phone calls. The article adds that these devices can easily be constructed in order to fool mobile phones thinking they are legitimate mobile phone masts.