Note: A version of this
piece appears today on BradBlog.
This version has additional information. Is someone murdering people who know too much about NSA
wiretapping?
Two whistleblowers -- one in Italy, one in Greece --
uncovered a secret bugging system installed in cell phones around the world.
Both met with untimely ends. The resultant scandals have received little press
in the United States, despite the profound implications for American critics of
the Bush administration.
Last month, Italian telecommunications security
expert Adamo Bove either lept or was pushed from a freeway overpass; he left no
note and had no history of depression. Last year (March, 2005), Greek
telecommunications expert Costas Tsalikidis met with a similarly enigmatic end.
Both had uncovered American attempts to eavesdrop on government officials,
anti-war activists, and private businessmen.
The
Bove case relates to the long-standing controversy over the CIA's kidnapping of
cleric Abu Omar, who was flown to Egypt and tortured. The post-Berlusconi
government of Italy is attempting to arrest and try all of CIA personnel
involved. Bove used mobile phone records to trace more than two dozen American
agents.
Bove had also revealed that his employer, Telecom Italia, had
allowed illegal "spyware" -- undetectable wiretaps -- to infest Italy's largest
communications system. His testimony helped to uncover the
unsettling relationship between SISMI chief
Marco Mancini and Telecom Italia head Giuliano Tavaroli. (Mancini, recently
arrested by Italian investigators, has also come under some suspicion for his
possible role in the strange affair of
Major General Nicola Calipari, killed by
American troops in Itaq.) In the 1990s, Bove had received wide praise for
helping to secure convictions of
two bosses in the Camorra, Naples' answer to
the Sicilian Mafia.
The case of Costas Tsalikidis -- an engineer for Vodaphone,
Greece's top telecommunications firm -- offers a similar picture. Tsalikidis
discovered an extraordinarily spohisticated piece of spyware within his
company's network. The Prime Minister and other top officials were
targeted, along with Greek military officers,
anti-war activists, various business figures -- and a cell phone within the
American embassy itself.
This
page gives a full list of the targets, very few of whom
could be considered as having even a remote connection to terrorism.
As
investigative journalists Paolo Pontoniere and Jeffrey Klein report:
The CEO of Vodaphone in Greece, George Koronias, has -- like
Giuliano Tavaroli, his Italian counterpart -- come under the suspicion of having
a hidden
relationship with American and British
intelligence. At least three Vodafone comunications hubs (
one expert says the number could be as high as
22) were compromised by the eavesdropping technology. Koronias had reported only
two of these bugs, and had failed to alert a watchdog agency of the discovery of
further listening devices.
Vodafone is a British company, comparable to
Sprint in the United States. Testifying before a Greek parliamentary committee,
Koronias insisted that no-one in the U.K. could have had any connection to the
ultra-sophisticated spyware.
This is, by any measure, a troubling admission -- especially
since Ericsson manufactures many mobile phones used in the United States.
Vodaphone insists they were never informed of this "feature" in Ericsson phones,
although Ericsson executive Bill Zikou has testified that the
company disclosed the truth via its sales
force and instruction manuals.
American security expert John Brady
Kiesling reveals some surprising details about the eavesdropping malware
embedded in Ericsson equipment:
Built into the Ericsson (Sweden) software that runs
the Vodafone (UK-owned) mobile telephony network switching system in Greece,
and similar GSM service providers around the world, is a little-known "Legal
Interception" software package designed to be used by law enforcement
authorities. This software allows incoming and outgoing conversations from
allegedly up to 5000-6000 mobile phone numbers to be recorded, on presentation
of a valid judicial warrant. [A friend in telecoms claims governments require
that telephone companies give law enforcement authorities the capability to
monitor up to 5% of active calls as one precondition for an operating
license]. However, to unlock and use the eavesdropping package, the company
must pay Ericsson a hefty fee (allegedly four million euros). The Greek
government allegedly refused to pay this fee, despite its desire for
wiretapping capability during the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics. One reason was
that a clear legal basis for such eavesdropping was not yet in
place..
Apparently someone persuaded a Vodafone or Ericsson employee
with access to the switching network to install a software parasite in at
least four and possibly more of the 22 call management centers that Vodafone
operates in Greece.
The family of Costas Tsalikidis, the whistleblower who was
found hanged in his apartment, does not accept the verdict of suicide. Neither
does his fiancée. The Greek press has hinted at
further
skullduggery:
The prosecutor also visited the lawyer of
Tsalikidis’ family, Themistoklis Sofos, who announced that his clients will be
filing a lawsuit against unknown parties for embezzlement and falsification of
documents pertaining to the deceased’s emails. In addition, they will subpoena
all those who participated in the much-publicised meeting just before the
revelation of the wiretappings; a meeting Vodafone denies ever having taken
place.
Perhaps most disturbing of all, Vodaphone had eliminated the
spyware from its system before Greek intelligence could conduct an examination.
Greek spy chief Ioannis Korantis testified that this move amounted to
destruction of evidence.
In 1999, the
Village Voice published a piece alleging
a connection between American intelligence and
Ericsson -- which, it seems, supplied telecom technology to
Iraq. According to the
Voice, the
American agency in question was not NSA or CIA or DIA, as you might surmise, but
a little-known group called SCS -- Special Collection Services.
According to two sources familiar with intelligence
activity in Iraq, the U.S. may have been aided by information delivered either
to UNSCOM or SCS from Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunications
firm...
More:
Regarding any possible collaboration in Iraq with
SCS or UNSCOM, Kathy Egan, Ericsson spokesperson, said she had no information
on such an operation, but if there was one, "It would be classified and we
would not be able to talk about it."
Are Ericsson cell phones the only ones with the built-in spy
technology? We can't be sure. But one thing is certain: When the fellow on TV asks "Can
you hear me now?", the person he's addressing may not be the only one who can
say yes.