The New York Times article is not suggestive at all when it comes to the sensitive issue of wiretapping in Greece: it speaks of rot at the heart of Greece. This is the second publication of this publication, as a few days ago the headline quite loudly stated that this "scandal reminds us of the years of the junta" in Greece.
This time, the publication clearly refers to the prime minister and his pre-election announcements about corruption and its crackdown, going so far as to compare then, with today, August 2022.
Specifically, the journalist writes: "The corruption and conflicts of interest that Mr. Mitsotakis pledged to crack down not only persist, but, in many ways, appear to have intensified. The Greek state has not only not been reshaped, but has received only a superficial makeover, an administrative window dressing".
The article continues with the reference to the incident on the mobile phone of Th. Koukakis, a journalist, where "in July last year, he received a message from an unknown number. "Thanasis, do you know this?" read the message in Greek, followed by a link, which he clicked. He proceeded to infect his iPhone with the Predator, a malware that transferred its data to a mysterious Athens-based, Cyprus-registered company called Intellexa”. "For decades now, wiretapping has been a feature of the Greek state. But, under Mr. Mitsotakis, national surveillance has expanded into a largely uncontrolled bureaucracy, one of his first acts as prime minister”, to place the Greek intelligence services under the direct control of his office and then “to place – by amendment – a former executive of a global security company as its director”, referring to the “shocking number of eavesdropping which is steadily increasing”, before posing some questions, such as:
“Could the Greek intelligence services, already running a massive surveillance campaign, have outsourced even more intrusive wiretapping to a shadowy private company? Could the government of Mr. Mitsotakis be behind the hacking; We don't know, but one indication comes from the prime minister's office", and this report on the appointment of Grigoris Dimitriadis - former director of his election campaign and his nephew, and the revelations by Greek journalists about him, the main one being that during his term he had financial transactions with a circle of businessmen who had transactions and with the owner of Intellexa.
