Reporters United “#PredatorGate: Investigating the underreported surveillance scandal in Greece”
Since December 2021, Reporters United has been investigating the wiretapping scandal, uncovering both the surveillance on part of the Greek national secret services (ΕΥP) and the spyware infections performed via the illegal spyware Predator. On January 4, 2022, we explained how the government changed the law governing the secret services practices by introducing an unconstitutional amendment to cover up its wiretapping. On April 15, we revealed that the amendment to the law intended to silence the surveillance of journalist Thanasis Koukakis. On June 3 and August 4, we documented (along with the newspaper “Efimerida ton Syntakton – EfSyn”) the business connections between Grigoris Dimitriadis, the nephew and general secretary of Prime Minister and businessman Felix Biggiou, a shareholder and former deputy administrator of Intellexa, the company that markets the spyware Predator in Greece. After these revelations, Mr. Dimitriadis resigned from the position of the Prime Minister’s general secretary (as did Panagiotis Kontoleon, who was holding at the time the position of General Director of Greek secret services) and filed a lawsuit against the journalists of Reporters United, the journalists “Efimerida ton Syntakton-Efsyn” and Thanasis Koukakis, claiming over half a million euros. Despite the lawsuit, which was denounced by domestic and international organizations as a SLAPP lawsuit aiming at silencing us, the investigation continued, revealing connections of government officials with businessman Yiannis Lavranos, involved in the wiretapping scandal, as well as the government’s war against ADAE, the independent Authority defined by the Constitution as responsible for the protection of privacy of communications in Greece and which plays an important institutional role in clearing up the wiretapping scandal.
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