The head of Greece’s privacy watchdog told MPs this week that the country was “defenceless” against attempts to pry on communications and that it would need to develop a national strategy to protect citizens from eavesdroppers.

Speaking to a parliamentary committee, Hellenic Authority of Communications Security and Privacy (ADAE) president Andreas Lambrinopoulos said that lawmakers had to take “immediate action” to close a legislative gap. “Nothing has happened in our country,” he said. “For instance, who is responsible for checking if a bank card’s details have been stolen from a network?

“There are millions of networks that are interconnected and which serve millions of citizens.” Lambrinopoulos also said that digital recorders had been found at some of OTE telecom’s telephone exchanges but that ADAE does not have the authority to investigate further. The ADAE chief reminded deputies about a major wiretapping case in Greece that remains unsolved.

A preliminary judicial investigation into a wiretapping system that helped unidentified eavesdroppers listen in on the mobile phone conversations of then Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and more than 100 others before, during and after the 2004 Athens Olympics has not led to any charges being filed yet. Ericsson, which supplied the telephone exchange that was hacked into, and Vodafone, which was the service provider, were both fined by ADAE in 2007 for failing to protect the privacy of those who had their phones hacked but the Council of State later cancelled the penalties.

ADAE fined Vodafone 76 million euros, while Ericsson was handed a 7.35-million-euro penalty. However, the Council of State later ruled the fines were not valid because ADAE had reached its decision behind closed doors. Lambrinopoulos revealed that both companies had asked for the fines they paid to be returned with interest but that ADAE was waiting for the legal complication to be cleared up.

Source: Kathimerini