[LINK] Whistleblowers Found Dead in Italy and Greece!

[Kim Holburn]

Although we're not hearing about this story here it has become a huge  
scandal in Italy:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/22/europe/ 
EU_GEN_Italy_Wiretapping_Probe.php
>  Massive wiretapping scandal alarms Italy
> The Associated Press
>
> Published: September 22, 2006
> ROME A massive case of illegal wiretapping and illicit data  
> gathering is sending shivers across Italy, with politicians warning  
> that the suspects represented a threat to democracy and were ready  
> to "blackmail the country."
>
> Reacting swiftly, Premier Romano Prodi's government on Friday  
> cracked down on illegal wiretapping, approving a decree that  
> includes stiff fines for those who make public the contents of the  
> illegally monitored conversations.

> The probe into the alleged spy ring — the latest case in a nation  
> that has a history of wiretapping scandals — continued Friday with  
> the questioning of key suspects behind bars.
>
> Emanuele Cipriani, head of a private investigation agency in  
> Florence, was questioned by prosecutors in a Milan prison. Former  
> Telecom Italia chief of security Giuliano Tavaroli, who allegedly  
> heads the ring, was to be questioned later in the day.
>
> The two were apprehended this week as part of a sweep that led to  
> the arrest of 20 people, including police officials.

> The suspects were accused of spying on a wide range of  
> personalities, tapping their phones, gathering bank and legal  
> records and other sensitive data. However, it was not clear why  
> they were gathering the information.
>
> Names of those under surveillance leaked to Italian newspapers  
> included high-level politicians, businessmen and journalists. Milan  
> daily Il Giornale on Friday published what it said was a list of  
> citizens who had been spied on.
>
> "They wanted to blackmail the country," said Piero Fassino, a  
> leading politician in the ruling center-left coalition.
>
> Justice Minister Clemente Mastella — who has opened an  
> investigation to determine whether ministry officials were involved  
> in the case — spoke of an "attack on democracy."
>
> Telecom Italia has not offered comments on the probe. Cipriani's  
> lawyer, Vinicio Nardo, said Friday that "democracy is not in danger."
>
> Italy is believed to be the European country where wiretapping is  
> most widely used.
>
> Virtually all scandals in past years — from the "Clean Hands"  
> investigations to the recent match-fixing allegations in soccer to  
> the corruption case involving the son of Italy's last king — have  
> involved wiretapping. Transcripts are invariably printed in the  
> Italian press.
>
> This has led to widespread calls for limiting the magistrates' use  
> of wiretapping as well as newspapers' right to print the transcripts.
>
> However, in this case, the wiretapping was not ordered by  
> magistrates conducting a probe but by what investigators describe  
> as a ring whose motives were still unclear.
>
> Premier Romano Prodi has not made any public comments on the case.
>
> But he has been involved in the other, unrelated controversy over  
> restructuring at Telecom.
>
> Telecom's reorganization plan includes separating the mobile phone  
> unit, TIM, and fixed-line operation into separate companies — a  
> move many saw as paving the way for the sale of the mobile operations.
>
> The plan led to a clash between the company's management and the  
> government, which was accused of interfering with private business.  
> Marco Tronchetti Provera resigned last week as Telecom Italia  
> chairman, and an economic aide to Prodi resigned earlier this week.
>
> Bowing to opposition demands, Prodi has agreed to address  
> parliament next week over the case.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/23/europe/ 
EU_GEN_Italy_Wiretapping_Probe.php

>  Justice minister seeks information about wiretapping at Telecom  
> Italia amid scandal
> The Associated Press
>
> Published: September 23, 2006
> ROME The Italian justice minister said Saturday that he has ordered  
> administrative checks to ascertain how wiretapping is carried out  
> at Telecom Italia, amid a massive case of illicit data gathering  
> involving a former official at Italy's largest phone company.


> An investigation into an alleged spy ring has led to the arrest of  
> 20 people, including former Telecom Italia chief of security  
> Giuliano Tavaroli and Emanuele Cipriani, head of a private  
> investigation agency in Florence.


> The suspects are accusing of spying on and gathering bank and legal  
> data, as well as other sensitive information, on a wide-ranging  
> number of businessmen, politicians and even sports figures.
>
> The motives remained unclear, as was the final destination of the  
> information.
>
> The government passed a measure Friday that cracked down on  
> wiretapping. The measure states that any conversations overheard  
> through illegal wiretapping cannot be used by prosecutors or  
> investigators, and includes stiff fines for those who make public  
> the contents of the illegally monitored conversations.

http://www.makfax.com.mk/look/agencija/article.tpl? 
IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=2&NrArticle=37210&NrIssue=146&NrSection=30
> Illegal wiretapping scandal unearthed in Italy
>
> Rome, 13:42
>
> Telecom Italia, one of the major electronic communications provider  
> in Italy, is in the middle of a huge scandal regarding the illegal  
> wiretapping and surveillance of telephone networks, Italian  
> newspapers said.
>
> The system, capable of recording sensitive information about  
> millions of Italians, was discovered by the internal audit. The aim  
> of illegal eavesdropping was to collect economic and political  
> information. Phone conversations of large number of politicians,  
> bankers, sub-contractors and even football players had been taped.
>
> Milan prosecutors opened an investigation against Giuliano  
> Tavaroli, former director of security in Telecom Italia, and  
> Emanuele Cipriani, owner of the private investigation company. They  
> are both charged with operating the system since 1997, which  
> brought them roughly 20 million euros profit.
>
> Milan police arrested 20 people Wednesday in an investigation into  
> suspected illegal wiretapping at Telecom Italia.
>
> Milan magistrates in charge of the investigation issued a total of  
> 11 arrest warrants for public servants and police officers.
>
> Italian newspapers say system computers and discovered paperwork  
> contained thousands of names.



On 2006 Aug 28, at 8:05 PM, Kim Holburn wrote:

> 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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Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny.
                           -- Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Analog, Apr 1961