Date: September 14, 2006 9:13:06 PM PDT
Subject: Fwd: [Fw: N.S.A. Murders, Worldwide Secret Cellphone Bugs]
___________________________________________________
Two Whistleblowers Dead -- Ties to N.S.A. Spying?
by Steven D
Sat Aug 26, 2006 at 03:42:40 PM PDT
Sometimes, in my internet research, I come across a story that reads
like it came straight out of a Robert Ludlum novel.
That was certainly my reaction when I recently came across this post by
Joseph Cannon on August 22nd at Bradblog involving the deaths of two
men, telecommunications experts in Italy and Greece, respectively. Both
men seemingly committed suicide within months after publicly revealing
their discovery of two separate instances of an American led effort to
eavesdrop on various governmental officials, businessmen and antiwar
activists in Europe through the use of hidden spyware in their
respective country's principal telecommunications' networks:
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
leapt 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.
Hardly surprising this story hasn't generated any attention in the
American media. The details of each case are ambiguous, and the facts
have been obscured both by the deaths of the two men in question, by an
apparently deliberate effort to destroy evidence of this illegal
wiretapping, and because the relevant authorities in both countries shut
down the official investigations into these men's deaths after they were
both ruled to be suicides. Furthermore, this happened in Europe, not
America, and our American media is notoriously negligent in its coverage
of important stories from overseas (as, for one example, its failure to
cover this story I posted a while back involving the Bush
administration's maddening refusal to assist the Swiss government in an
investigation into a smuggling ring involving nuclear materials and
technology).
What we do know, based on the European reports cited in Mr. Cannon's
post, however, suggests the existence of a massive, coordinated effort
by the Bush
administration to violate the laws and sovereignty of other nations in
its attempts to gather information, regardless of the tenuous connection
such eavesdropping may have to the "War on Terror." One that may have
led directly to the death of two men who had exposed elements of this
ongoing spy program operating in their countries: Adamo Bove in Italy,
and Costas Tsalikidis in Greece.
First, a report on the mysterious death of Adamo Bove from Indymedia Italia:
Just after noon on Friday, July 21, Adamo Bove -- head of security at
Telecom Italia, the country's largest telecommunications firm -- told
his wife he had some errands to run as he left their Naples apartment.
Hours later, police found his car parked atop a freeway overpass.
Bove's body lay on the pavement some 100 feet below.
Bove was a master at detecting hidden phone networks. Recently, at the
direction of Milan prosecutors, he'd used mobile phone records to trace
how a "Special Removal Unit" composed of C.I.A. and S.I.S.M.I. (the
Italian C.I.A.) agents abducted Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric, and flew
him to Cairo where he was tortured. The Omar kidnapping and the alleged
involvement of 26 C.I.A. agents, whom prosecutors seek to arrest and
extradite, electrified Italian media. U.S. media noted the story, then
dropped it.
The first Italian press reports after Bove's death said the 42-year-old
had committed suicide. Bove, according to unnamed sources, was
depressed about his imminent indictment by Milan prosecutors. But
prosecutors immediately, and uncharacteristically, set the record
straight: Bove was not a target; in fact, he was prosecutors' chief
source. Bove, prosecutors said, was helping them investigate his own
bosses, who were orchestrating an illegal wiretapping bureau and the
destruction of incriminating digital evidence. One Telecom executive
had already been forced out when he was caught conducting these illicit
operations, as
well as selling intercepted information to a business intelligence firm.
And the strangely similar tale of the death of Costas Tsalikidis as
reported by the BBC's website:
Last month, the government admitted that the mobile phones of the prime
minister, the most senior members of the cabinet and top security
officials had all been tapped in 2004 -- the year Athens hosted the
Olympic Games.
The committee in Athens has been questioning executives from two of the
world's leading mobile phone companies, Vodafone and Ericsson, about the
scandal.
But attention is also increasingly focusing on the alleged suicide of a
senior Vodafone manager just after the phone-tapping operation was
discovered on the Vodafone network last year.
In a serene but cramped graveyard in the western suburbs of Athens, lies
the body of Costas Tsalikidis, a network manager for Vodafone Greece.
He is buried with other members of his family. But his gravestone shows
he died aged just 38. He was found hanged in his apartment on the
morning of 9 March last
year. [...]
...[H]is family believe his death is suspicious and are calling for his
body to be exhumed so a second post-mortem can be carried out by one of
the world's leading forensic pathologists, Dr Michael Baden of the
United States.
"They believe they will find new evidence," says the family lawyer,
Themis Sofos.
Dr Sofos adds that other parts of the original investigation were weak.
"No one went to the house of Costas, no one took photos and to see the
circumstances of his death... no one took fingerprints." [...]
But there is another theory about Costas Tsalikidis: that he was
allegedly the person who actually inserted the software setting up the
phone-tapping operation. [...]
The theory is put forward by John Brady Kiesling a former American
diplomat who worked at the U.S. embassy in Athens until resigning in
2003 over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
He is convinced American intelligence agents were behind the whole
bugging operation and he says it is possible they used Mr. Tsalikidis to
install the software.
"I believe he committed suicide to protect his professional honour,"
says Mr. Kiesling.
Pretty strange coincidence. Cannon clearly believes the two cases are
linked to a broader American electronic spying network throughout Europe
with the assistance of at least two major multinational
telecommunications firms:
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 communications 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.
'Only Ericsson's staff could have set up such a device,' he said.
Ericsson furiously countered that Vodafone not only knew about the
illegal software but had activated it at the request of British
intelligence agents.
More on Ericsson's official response:
Ericsson, the company that produces the software used by Vodafone,
issued an announcement clarifying that two types of software were
employed for tapping the phone conversations.
The first one employed legally had been developed by Ericsson and had
been installed in Vodafone, yet it was not activated. The second
software, which was of unknown origins, namely it had not been developed
by Ericsson, had been illegally installed in Vodafone's system to
activate the legal software and erase the traces of the phone-tapping.
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.
Are you, like me, now pondering the likelihood that your cell phone may
be bugged by the U.S. government?
And do you really believe this surveillance program to tap into mobile
telecommunications is limited to Europe and to phones manufactured by
Ericsson? I sure don't. And I am more than a little suspicious that
the two men who just happened to know the most about how this, arguably
illegal, electronic spying program which operated in their own countries
both committed suicide after revelations regarding these scandals first
became known to the European public.
With all that's been disclosed over the past year regarding the N.S.A.'s
data mining and warrantless surveillance programs, I've always felt that
what we know is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how far Bush has
been willing to go to spy on his "enemies" both foreign and domestic.
These two disturbing cases from Europe, barely reported upon, if at all,
by our provincial, lazy, stenographic journalists in America, suggest
that Bush has invaded our privacy to an extent that would make George
Orwell's Big Brother green with envy.
~~~
Tags: N.S.A. Spying Program, Electronic Surveillance, Bush
administration, Privacy Rights, Civil Liberties, Whistleblowers, Italy,
Adamo Bove, Costas Tsalikidis, Italy, Greece, C.I.A., S.I.S.M.I.,
Recommended (all tags)
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