Gov't irked by Pangalos claims that Greece spied on US ambassadors
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Claims made on Tuesday by former Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos that during his time in office Greek secret services eavesdropped on US ambassadors in Athens and Ankara enraged the government as they came on the same day as reports that the American Embassy in Athens was one of Washington’s key spy centers in Europe.
“The National Intelligence Service (EYP) carries out its mission within the framework of the constitution and the law, while respecting friends and allies,” said government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou after Pangalos, who was foreign minister between 1996 and 1999, made his allegations on a radio show. “EYP has been working for years with the equivalent US agencies and other countries to combat terrorism.”
Privately, Greek government officials expressed outrage at Pangalos’s comments, which they felt took the pressure off Washington to account for its eavesdropping of European leaders by making the assertion that Greece’s intelligence service had targeted American officials. “He made it difficult for us to seek explanations from the US,” said a Greek official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Pangalos’s claim came in the wake of German news magazine Der Spiegel citing leaked information from CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden that indicated a joint Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA) group known as the Special Collection Service operated 90 surveillance facilities worldwide, including at the US Embassy in Athens.
The Athens facility, allegedly located on the roof of the US Embassy in Athens on Vassilissis Sofias Avenue, is reported as being among 14 that were operated remotely.
The Hellenic Authority of Communications Security and Privacy (ADAE), the country’s privacy watchdog, is due to hold a meeting today to discuss this report.
Troika not convinced social security bill can cover fiscal gap
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A bill aiming to trim Greece’s social security spending will not be enough to cover next year’s fiscal gap, European sources told Kathimerini on Tuesday, as the difference in opinion between Athens and the troika over how much austerity will be needed next year looks set to intensify.
The government was due to submit to Parliament late on Tuesday or early Wednesday a draft law that aims, among other things, to limit evasion of social security contributions. Along with the across-the-board implementation of a unified public sector wage structure and several other measures, the government hopes to produce 500 million euros of savings next year. The troika, however, believes that much more will be needed, with the fiscal gap likely to come in at around 2 billion euros.
European sources told Kathimerini’s Brussels correspondent Nikos Chrysoloras that the troika does not believe the bill will result in the projected savings and that these savings will not be enough anyway.
The two key stumbling blocks to Athens and its lenders agreeing are Greece’s projected revenues for next year and its forecasts for welfare expenditure. The troika believes that social spending will be higher than Greece expects next year due to high unemployment and the growing inability of firms to pay social security contributions. The lenders are also unwilling to accept Greek projections for tax revenues next year, which include extra income from an improvement in tax collection and a further clampdown on evasion.
The troika’s immediate concern upon the return of its inspectors to Athens next week will be to check on how close Greece is to meeting the “milestones” it has agreed in order to secure its next bailout tranche of 1 billion euros. One of those commitments is placing 12,500 civil servants in a mobility scheme. Speaking in Brussels on Tuesday, Administrative Reform Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that this target is likely to be met next week.
He added that the government is looking for another 1,270 employees to dismiss in order to meet its target of 4,000 civil servant sackings by the end of the year. It is still not certain that the troika will approve the government’s calculations as 230 dismissals relate to public sector workers fired for breaking the code of conduct. Another 500 or so are employees who quit because of poor health.
Salaries in Greece suffer double blow, but productivity rebounds
By Sotiris Nikas
Greeks were hit with the biggest increase in taxation and social security contribution deductions from salaries and pensions among European Union member states in the 2001-12 period, according to a European Commission report on the European labor market.
This country is also the only one in the bloc that has seen a reduction in nominal salaries in all of the last three years, with civil servants taking a bigger reduction than their private sector counterparts in the period from 2010 to 2012. Greece further posted the biggest annual reduction last year, amounting to 8.3 percent, while the average eurozone salary climbed 1.3 percent compared with the year before. This means that Greeks have suffered a double blow, both on the salaries front and in terms of taxation.
Commission data showed that the total tax on salaries grew by 7.2 percent in 2012 compared with 2001, most of which came from the 6.4 percent increase in income tax. Both increases were by far the highest in the eurozone. Social security contributions from both employers and employees rose by 0.4 percent in the 2001-12 period.
All of the tax reductions of the previous decade have evaporated in the last couple of years, with citizens being burdened with even more tax obligations. Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed that total deductions from salaries for taxes and contributions grew from 39.1 percent in 2000 to 41.9 percent last year.
Labor productivity posted a steady reduction from 2008, when the Greek recession started, to 2011, but last year it showed a 2.1 percent rebound from the year before, according to the European Commission report.
The wonderful world of spying friends and foes is being unfolded with the NSA scandal, a world equipped with super modern surveillance units and lay light years away from the fictitious and exaggerated reports of Graham Greens’ local informants and spies.
The NSA scandal reveals that US-friends have not only bugged their foes but also their friends and allies, like the mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. I’m not going to criticize about the neglectfulness of the German secret services that had allowed Merkel to speak from an insecure line. Unless it was Merkel’s very private mobile phone where she would chat with an arthritis-sick aunt or exchange sausage-recipe tips with a cousin. But that would be of not interest for the US National Security Agency. Or would it?
Anyway, the German are more than just offended from the whole issue, they feel betrayed by their American friends and local journalists are keen and determined to reveal every single detail that will expose the great worldwide.addfavoritecountry.nsa spying network. Attention here: the URL does not exist, I believe…
German weekly DER SPIEGEL acquired and published a document explaining in full detail all the technological finesses of the ultramodern spying, wiretapping, surveillance and interception of communications world. The document was leaked by former employee at U.S. intelligence services Edward Snowden .
The document explains how the NSA managed to collect information from phone calls and electronic emails and possible sms via super modern surveillance units installed on the roofs of US embassies in more than 50 countries.
“The surveillance equipment is placed on the upper floors or the roof of the embassy, covered with panels or structures to protect from prying eyes and it can be operated remotely without requiring the presence of personnel,” notes DER SPIEGEL.
According to a top-secret map from August 2010 published on Der Spiegel’s website but later censored, a joint Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA) group known as the Special Collection Service allegedly operated 90 surveillance facilities worldwide, including at the US Embassy in Athens.
The report also suggested that US diplomatic premises in most European capitals hosted special collection facilities including the embassies in Berlin, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Prague, Geneva and Vienna, as well as Moscow and Kiev.
According to daily TA NEA, “the alleged surveillance equipment constructed of white construction material has been located on the roof of the US embassy on Vasilissis Sofias and is being reportedly operated remotely.” On its cover story TA NEA published also picture from the alleged super bug on top of the US embassy in Athens.
TA NEA via zougla.gr
via newsit.gr
The picture looks like via google maps, no?
Ex Foreign Minister Pangalos: We tapped US ambassadors in Athens and Ankara
In a related development, former PASOK Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos, told Vima fm on Tuesday morning that the Greek National Intelligence Service (EYP) was systematically tapped into telephone calls at the US embassies in Greece AND in Turkey.
“EYP had succeeded in surveying not just the American ambassador in Athens but also the American ambassador in Ankara,” Pangalos claimed referring to the time (1996-1999) he served as Foreign Minister
“EYP did surveillance with equipment and copied on tapes the two embassies [of US] in Ankara and Athens,” Pangalos sai, adding that he was receiving information that it was of interest for him as Foreign Minister.
“I did not learn something important, because I knew all important things. Just sometimes it was very fun to hear the U.S. Ambassador telling his counterpart or someone from the State Department “what is this motherfucker Pangalos doing?”. And the other answering “this motherfucker called me today” and so on. Friendly people … And I was talking respectively with my colleagues about some Americans, when I knew and thought that no one was listening to me.” (Vimafm)
So far Greek Foreign Ministry refrained from commenting neither to alleged surveillance equipment on US embassy roof nor to Pangalos’ statements.
I wonder what the US state departments would say on this or the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
However, we should keep in mind that that states spy on each other is nothing new and no government can claim, it doesn’t know who and how. It’s also nothing new that intelligence officers register as diplomatic personnel, as DER SPIEGEL reveals, while the intelligence of the country where they register know it. It’s part of the mutual game with lots of unwritten laws and also lots of red lines.
Greek wiretapping scandal 0f 2004- 2005
It’s not the first time of Greece being the target of intelligence surveillance. The Greek wiretapping scandal of 2004-2005 that involved the illegal tapping of more than 100 mobile phones of members of the Greek government. The investigation was stuck, while the network manager of the mobile company involved fund a mysterious death.
The Greek wiretapping case of 2004-2005, also referred to as Greek Watergate, involved the illegal tapping of more than 100 mobile phones on the Vodafone Greece network belonging mostly to members of the Greek government and top-ranking civil servants. The taps began sometime near the beginning of August 2004 and were removed in March 2005 without discovering the identity of the perpetrators.
The phones tapped included those of the Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis and members of his family, the Mayor of Athens, Dora Bakoyannis, most phones of the top officers at the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry for Public Order, members of the ruling party, ranking members of then opposition party (PASOK), the Hellenic Navy General Staff, the previous Minister of Defense and one phone of a locally hired Greek American employee of the American Embassy.
Foreign and Greek media have raised United States intelligence agencies as the main suspects. However, the identity of the perpetrators was never conclusively established, in large part due to the botched manner in which the investigation was handled, initially by Vodafone and then by the Greek authorities.
On March 9, the Network Planning Manager for Vodafone Greece, Kostas Tsalikidis, was found dead in an apparent suicide. According to several experts questioned by the Greek press, Tsalikidis was a key witness in the investigation of responsibility of the wiretaps. Family and friends believe there are strong indications he was the person who first discovered that highly sophisticated software had been secretly inserted into the Vodafone network. (Full story here)
If the modern intelligence scandal is too complicated for you I strongly advice you to read one of my favorites spying novels, Graham Green’s gorgeous black comedy Our Man in Havana. 
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For a Greek apopsis on this, look there... http://efoploo.wordpress.com/
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