A court has convicted four people linked to the trafficking of the Predator spyware in the phone hacking scandal that rocked the country in 2022.
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The BBC reports :
“In what became known as the “Watergate of Greece,” surveillance software called Predator was used to target 87 people – including government ministers, senior military officials and journalists. The four who marketed the software were found guilty by an Athens court of misdemeanors of violating the confidentiality of telephone communications and illegally accessing personal data and conversations.
The court sentenced the four defendants to long prison terms, suspended pending appeal. Although they face 126 years in prison each, they will only serve eight as usual, which is the maximum for misdemeanors.
The four defendants who were found guilty – two Greeks, Felix Bitzios and Yiannis Lavranos, and two Israelis, Tal Dilian and Sara Hamou – were not in the dock for the verdict, nor were they during the five-month trial.
The court refused to grant mitigation to the defendants.
One in three of the dozens of individuals targeted were also under legal surveillance by the Greek intelligence services (EYP).
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who had placed the EYP directly under his supervision, called it a scandal, but no government official has been charged in court and critics accuse the government of trying to cover up the truth.
The case dates back to the summer of 2022, when the current leader of the Greek socialist party PASOK, Nikos Androulakis – then an MEP – was informed by the European Parliament’s IT experts that he had received a malicious text message containing a link.
The Predator spyware, which is marketed by the Athens-based Israeli company Intellexa, can access a device's messages, camera, and microphone.
Its use was illegal in Greece at the time, but a new law passed in 2022 has legalized the use of surveillance software by state security under strict conditions.
Androulakis also discovered that he had been monitored for “national security reasons” by Greek intelligence services. The scandal has since escalated into a debate about democratic accountability in Greece.
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
