Vodafone fined €76m over Greek wiretap scandal

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>]

http://www.theregister.com/2006/12/15/voda_fined_over_greek_wiretaps/

Vodafone fined €76m over Greek wiretap scandal


Trojan horse

By John Leyden
Published Friday 15th December 2006 12:28 GMT

Greece's privacy watchdog has fined Vodafone €76m ($100m) over a wiretapping scandal that saw the illegal monitoring of 
the mobile calls of top government officials including Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis.

Vodafone was ruled at fault for not preventing unknown hackers from subverting a legitimate surveillance system, 
supplied by Swedish firm Ericsson, to spy on Greek officials around the time of the 2004 Athens Olympics. The mobile 
operator said that the investigation was incomplete because officials were yet to question Ericsson. It plans to appeal 
the ruling.

"Vodafone announced that it fully rejects the rationale of the authority and considers the penalty illegal, unfair and 
totally groundless," Vodafone Greece said in a statement, AP reports 
<http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/14/europe/EU_GEN_Greece_Wiretaps_Vodafone.php> . "Vodafone will seek recourse 
with the judiciary against the decision and is certain it will be overturned."

Investigators failed to determine who was behind phone taps targeting more than 100 Vodafone users including government 
ministers, military officials and journalists between around June 2004 until March 2005, when Vodafone dismantled the 
systems after the security breach was uncovered. Calls from and to targeted phones were relayed to 16 mobile phones 
using pre-paid cards, located in central Athens, thanks to unauthorised manipulation of the Ericsson-supplied 
surveillance software used by Vodafone Greece.

...

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