[LINK] Whistleblowers Found Dead in Italy and Greece!

[Kim Holburn]

An interesting story here:

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html? 
article_id=d54bf5a301e73cbba0663d69a33d80c0

> Security Experts' 'Suicides' Called Into Question -- European Media  
> Probe Dangers of Secret Surveillance Systems
>
> New America Media, Investigation, Jeffrey Klein and Paolo  
> Pontoniere, Aug 16, 2006
>
> Editor's Note: European journalists and investigators are tracking  
> the mysterious deaths of two security experts -- one in Italy, the  
> other in Greece -- who had uncovered extensive spyware in their  
> telecommunications firms. So far, despite possible U.S. links to  
> the extralegal, politicized spy operations, few U.S. media have  
> picked up the trail. Jeffrey Klein, a founding editor of Mother  
> Jones, this summer received a Loeb, journalism's top award for  
> business reporting. Paolo Pontoniere is a New America Media  
> European commentator.
>
> 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 CIA and SISMI  
> (the Italian CIA) 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 CIA 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.
>
> About 16 months earlier, in March of 2005, Costas Tsalikidis, a 38- 
> year-old software engineer for Vodaphone in Greece had just  
> discovered a highly sophisticated bug embedded in the company's  
> mobile network. The spyware eavesdropped on the prime minister's  
> and other top officials' cell phone calls; it even monitored the  
> car phone of Greece's secret service chief. Others bugged included  
> civil rights activists, the head of Greece's "Stop the War"  
> coalition, journalists and Arab businessmen based in Athens. All  
> the wiretapping began about two months before the Olympics were  
> hosted by Greece in August 2004, according to a subsequent  
> investigation by the Greek authorities.
>
> Tsalikidis, according to friends and family, was excited about his  
> work and was looking forward to marrying his longtime girlfriend.  
> But on March 9, 2005, his elderly mother found him hanging from a  
> white rope tied to pipes outside of his apartment bathroom. His  
> limp feet dangled a mere three inches above the floor. His death  
> was ruled a suicide; he, like Adamo Bove, left no suicide note.
>
> The next day, Vodaphone's top executive in Greece reported to the  
> prime minister that unknown outsiders had illicitly eavesdropped on  
> top government officials. Before making his report, however, the  
> CEO had the spyware destroyed, even though this destroyed the  
> evidence as well.
>
> Investigations into the alleged suicides of both Adamo Bove and  
> Costas Tsalikidis raise questions about more than the suspicious  
> circumstances of their deaths. They point to politicized, illegal  
> intelligence structures that rely upon cooperative business  
> executives. European prosecutors and journalists probing these  
> spying networks have revealed that:
>
> -- the Vodaphone eavesdropping was transmitted in real time via  
> four antennae located near the U.S. embassy in Athens, according to  
> an 11-month Greek government investigation. Some of these  
> transmissions were sent to a phone in Laurel, Md., near America's  
> National Security Agency.
>
> -- according to Ta Nea, a Greek newspaper, Vodaphone's CEO  
> privately told the Greek government that the bugging culprits were  
> "U.S. agents." Because Greece's prime minister feared domestic  
> protests and a diplomatic war with the United States, he ordered  
> the Vodafone CEO to withhold this conclusion from his own  
> authorities investigating the case.
>
> -- in both the Italian and Greek cases, the spyware was much more  
> deeply embedded and clever than anything either phone company had  
> seen before. Its creation required highly experienced engineers and  
> expensive laboratories where the software could be subjected to the  
> stresses of a national telephone system. Greek investigators  
> concluded that the Vodaphone spyware was created outside of Greece.
>
> -- once placed, the spyware could have vast reach since most host  
> companies are merging their Internet, mobile telephone and fixed- 
> line operations onto a single platform.
>
> -- Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, BND, recently snooped on  
> investigative journalists. According to parliamentary  
> investigations, the spying may have been carried out using the  
> United States's secretive Bad Aibling base in the Bavarian Alps,  
> which houses the American global eavesdropping program dubbed Echelon.
>
> Were the two alleged suicides more than an eerie coincidence? A few  
> media in Italy -- La Stampa, Dagospia and Feltrinelli, among others  
> -- have noted the unsettling parallels. But so far no journalists  
> have been able to overcome the investigative hurdles posed by two  
> entirely different criminal inquiry systems united only by two  
> prime ministers not eager to provoke the White House's wrath. In  
> the United States, where massive eavesdropping programs have  
> operated since 9/11, investigators, reporters and members of  
> Congress have not explored whether those responsible for these  
> spying operations may be using them for partisan purposes or  
> economic gain. As more troubling revelations come out of Europe, it  
> may become more difficult to ignore how easily spying programs can  
> be hijacked for illegitimate purposes. The brave soul who pursues  
> this line of inquiry, however, should fear for his or her life.
>

--
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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