{"id":19614,"date":"2024-08-01T21:24:31","date_gmt":"2024-08-01T18:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=19614"},"modified":"2024-08-01T21:24:31","modified_gmt":"2024-08-01T18:24:31","slug":"greece-the-operation-to-cover-up-the-predator-case-causes-permanent-damage-to-the-countrys-institutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=19614","title":{"rendered":"Greece: The operation to cover up the Predator case causes permanent damage to the country’s institutions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

No one expected the investigation into the Predator wiretapping and illegal spyware case to be an easy task. Especially when such practices often receive all sorts of “gray zones” and are meant to be “sealed”. But this cannot justify any cover-up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This also explains the severe criticism received by the Supreme Court’s Prosecutor’s Office’s decision to drop the wiretapping case, at least in terms of the part concerning the involvement of Greek security services and government officials in the use of illegal spy software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this is because there is a significant number of elements, which came to light primarily from journalistic research in recent years and which it seems – we say it seems because the announcement was made public, not the prosecution order itself and its rationale – that either were not received considered or not considered further. In addition to what has been recorded in the journalistic investigation, what the journalist Thanasis Koukakis mentions in his multi-page memorandum to the Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court and Prosecutor Georgia Adeilini.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, the emphasis on the choices of the Supreme Court Prosecutor’s Office does not result only from the fact that she made the decision, but also from the fact that it was the Supreme Court Prosecutor who removed in October 2023 the case file from the two First Instance Prosecutors who had charged her initially, Angeliki Triantaphyllou and Konstantinos Spyropoulos, for giving it to the Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Achilleas Zisi, who filed the opinion at the end of July and a few days later made the announcement of the partial archiving of the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why didn’t he see the obvious correlation between the National Services Information (\u0395\u03a5\u03a0) and Predator targets?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first element that draws attention is the extremely problematic finding of the two experts appointed by Mr. Zisis who ruled that it was a mere coincidence that a third of the Predator’s targets were also “targets” of legitimate EY\u03a0 connections<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As is well known, the investigation by the Personal Data Protection Authority (PDPA) identified 115 of the 116 recipients of infected messages. Of the 115 numbers whose owners were identified, 32 belong to legal entities, 64 belong to natural persons and 19 numbers are “burners” mobile numbers, i.e. numbers registered in the names of nationals of Asian countries and it appears that were used in some testing by Predator operators. In particular, the Authority detected more than 225 cases of attempted installation of spyware on 94 different numbers belonging to 87 natural or legal persons. We remind you that based on reports these persons included ministers, officials, businessmen and journalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is around this list that the request was made, initially by the two Prosecutors who had the case before the Anti-Corruption Commission, to cross-check this list with the list of legal connections for reasons of national security. This intersection was significantly delayed and we remind you that it is during this period that we had both the removal of the case from the two Prosecutors and also the decision to change the members of the ADAE which came under fire from the opposition. We note here that (PDPA)officials have repeatedly pointed out EY\u03a0’s reluctance to cooperate with (PDPA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, after a long delay, in June 2024, the deputy prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Achilleas Zisis, issued an urgent order to conduct a preliminary expert opinion and appoint two experts, a university professor and an Greek Police officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the expertise they do is limited. The two experts addressed only the EYP and not the Special Violent Crimes Directorate of the Hellenic Police (SVCDHP), which is the second agency that has the ability to formulate a request to remove the confidentiality of communications .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, even so they find that 27 of the 87 Predator targets were also targets of legal surveillance by the EY\u03a0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sets a figure of 31% which points to a clear correlation between monitoring by the E\u03a5\u03a0 and monitoring using illegal spyware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that’s exactly where the experts – and then accepted by the Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court – an impressive statistical alchemy: the experts arbitrarily compare not between 87 and 27 but between 27 and 15,304 which is the total number of the anti-disclosure provisions in the period under review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We note here that the Data Protection Authority did not investigate all group messaging companies, so the total actual list of those who received an infected message is probably much larger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any case, it is obvious that the arbitrary choice of field of comparison is what made it “easy” for the experts to decide that it was a coincidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it is clear that the actual data and the fact that 31% of the phones attempted to be infected with Predator also had a “legitimate link” from the EY\u03a0 is sufficient evidence of a single monitoring center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court defiantly chose to bypass this and adopt the theory of “coincidence” and argue that “it is incontrovertibly concluded that there was absolutely no involvement with the spy software predator or any other similar software of a state agency, especially the National Service of Information (EY\u03a0), of Anti-Terrorism and in general of Greek Police (Ministry of Citizen Protection) or any government official.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should be noted that according to the announcement of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court, the lifting of the secrecy of the 27 is also considered legal, i.e. the monitoring by the E\u03a5\u03a0 for reasons of national security of ministers, officials, the Financial Prosecutor, officers is legal. However, according to information during the transition of Deputy Prosecutor Ah. Life at the E\u03a5\u03a0, only the existence of declassification provisions and not the entire files were searched. However, when such a deprival is made the request is recorded, who makes it, the signature of the commander, the identification of the number by the provider, and at some point a history of the person, along with the fact sheets apparently. But all of this seems to have gone unexamined even though if nothing else they would have explained why these individuals were being monitored and citing what risk to national security.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Why didn’t they investigate certain aspects of the case?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the announcement of the Supreme Court Prosecutor’s Office claims that a full investigation was carried out and all aspects of the case were examined there are several indications that the investigation was not as thorough as it should have been:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first press reports indicate that not all targets of the illegal spyware were subpoenaed, only those who sought it themselves. This means that they were not considered as potentially blackmailed, although this would be relevant in such a wiretapping case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the original Prosecutor’s order in November 2022 to the Economic Police for an investigation involving 14 natural and legal persons involved in the case also included the former general secretary of the Prime Minister Grigoris Dimitriadis, in the end his own residence was not searched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although, as reported by the inside story and the journalists Tasos Telloglou and Eliza Triantafyllou, it was known from February 2023 that as soon as the investigations by Citizen Lab and META on Intellexa’s Predator were issued in December 2021, two Greek employees of the company went in the company’s data center and removed servers and equipment, these employees were not called to testify even though their testimony would obviously be of great importance. Nor was the head of the company’s offices here, Merom Harpaz, called to testify, according to the same publication. Nor were other indications of any presence of officials of the \u0395\u03a5\u03a0, the Greek Police or other companies at Intellexa’s offices (e.g. by checking the covid tests carried out on specific dates) examined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although there are several journalistic investigations that have raised the issue of the companies that paid the servers for the spoofed pages that were a key aspect of how Predator works, this dimension seems to have been under-explored. Essentially, the routes of money inside and outside Greece do not seem to have been examined in their entirety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israeli Rotem Farkas, who in 2017 together with other Israeli businessmen founded Cytrox in North Macedonia, the company that developed Predator before it was acquired by Intellaxa, and who was proven to be in Greece in the second half of 2020, working on behalf of Intellexa and who claimed, according to reports, that he had come at the instigation of the Greek government, was never called to testify even though he is clearly a “key person”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, the data on Intellexa’s transactions contained in the Financial Police report, which includes the full range of its transactions, has never been investigated to the depth and extent it deserves. As noted by Tasos Telloglou and Eliza Triantafyllou “the Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court did not request judicial assistance for the opening of the accounts of all these companies connected to the Greek Intellexa SA in foreign jurisdictions, with which the Greek company had regular transactions. It is noted that in order to establish a felony, it would have to be proven, among other things, that there was a financial benefit of more than 120,000 euros from the interception of personal data.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, the entire spectrum of the financial transactions of the companies involved in Greece, including their existing transactions with the public and, in essence, the E\u03a5\u03a0, i.e. the “path of the money” does not seem to have received the close study that would correspond to the seriousness of the case. Nor do they appear to have been examined as witnesses who were connected with these companies and had clear knowledge of their dealings. Nor was the information provided by Thanasis Koukakis with his memorandum according to which although Intellexa formally ended its operations in Greece under the burden of the wiretapping scandal in August 2022, approximately 20 of its employees appear to have been “divided” into three Greek companies, which according to information cited by Koukakis offer more of a “shell” operation so that the real employer is not visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor was the revelation made by the inside story and the Investigative Reporting Lab about the existence of a pre-agreement in 2022 between the then commander of the E\u03a5\u03a0 Panagiotis Kontoleon and the head of the cyber security service of North Macedonia, a country where Intellexa also operated, a pre-agreement that its electronic form, the journalistic investigation showed, contains the traces of corrections by Nir Ben Moshe, a former high-ranking official of the Israeli Ministry of Defense who after his demobilization worked with Intellexa. And this despite the fact that this is information that actually shows contacts between EYP and Intellexa, i.e. the company that marketed the Predator<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accordingly, even though names of security officials who were part of the group allegedly operating the Predator within the notorious KETYAK were reportedly even indicated, it remains unknown whether and to what extent this side was investigated, judging by the categorical nature the announcement of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The unanswered questions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, in essence, the announcement of the Prosecutor’s Office is anything but closing the case. As essential questions remain unanswered:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.<\/strong> Who and why decided the surveillance of ministers, officers, officials, journalists by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.<\/strong> How are the indications for a clear existence of a “common center” that decided both the monitoring through EY\u03a0 and then the monitoring with Predator explained?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.<\/strong> Were there ever discussions and to what extent did they go about supplying the illegal Predator spyware to the Greek authorities as well?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4.<\/strong> Did KETYAK \/ \u0395\u03a5\u03a0 operate and to what extent as a venue (or structure) where pending a decision on formal supply of the Predator (or given the difficulty of such a supply due to US and European reactions to the use of spyware), this was actually put operating as a collaboration between EY\u03a0 and Intellexa officials, a idiosyncratic version of Public Private Partnership (PPP) surveillance with the apparently full knowledge of EY\u03a0 and its political superiors?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5.<\/strong> Was this operation of the Predator funded indirectly through other dealings of the companies involved with the government?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. <\/strong>Was the facilitation made for the export of the Predator part of a transaction for its even “gray zone” use?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7.<\/strong> What degree of knowledge did the prime minister’s office have, due to the direct subordination of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to it, of all these processes and what was the participation in making the relevant decisions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These questions are real, they refer to a different story, but one that is based on what we have learned so far, a story where the Predator was indeed used and on Greek soil in collaboration with security service officials and with a joint center that decided to it makes the transition from “legitimate attachments” to illegal spyware, a narrative that actually raises very important political responsibilities for both the government and the prime minister and the prime minister’s office. And certainly the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court is far from refuting this narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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