Following the revelations from Inside Story and Reporters United about the surveillance of Thanasis Koukakis, government spokesman Yiannis Economou said that the National Transparency Authority (NTA) “on its own motion,” will investigate.
However, the issue raised in this case is that the Koukakis case concerns the removal of telecommunications secrecy and in Greece the competent authority is the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy ADAE (Law 3115/2003 | Government Gazette A ’47/27.2.2003, as amended and in force) or otherwise the Hellenic Data Protection Authority (DPA). In any case, the NTA, as is clear from the description of its responsibilities, can not claim competency over the issue. The sidelining of the other two authorities and the investigation led by EAD may prove an obstacle to true investigation, which may eventually lead to the `cover up` of the case.
Stefanos Loukopoulos, director of Vouliwatch, told Reporters United that the responsibilities of EAD, as defined in Law 4622/2019 (Government Gazette A ‘133 / 7.8.2019) “do not in any way cover the substance of this case, which concerns a clear breach of the confidentiality of communications and the privacy of a journalist.”
Indeed, the NTA has absorbed the responsibilities of five other bodies which have been subsequently dissolved (1. Office of the Inspector General of Public Administration, 2. Inspectors-controllers Body of Public Administration, 3. Body of Inspectors of Health and Welfare Services, 4. Inspectorate of Public Works 5. Inspectorate of Transport), as well as the General Secretariat for Combating Corruption. None of these services are related to the confidentiality of communications.
“Additionally, the goal of the NTA is defined as the detection and suppression of acts of corruption as well as their prevention, but this does not apply to the protection of the privacy and secrecy of communications”, adds Mr. Loukopoulos. “The fact that in this case the NTA reacted almost immediately and spontaneously, in essence assuming the responsibilities of another independent authority, the ADAE, raises reasonable concerns about the proper functioning of the independent authorities.”
It should be noted that, although the government appointed the NTA as the main body responsible for the investigation of the case, the institutionally competent authority, ADAE, the day after the government publicised this decision, decided to conduct an audit of Cosmote following a complaint by Thanasis Koukakis. This is the company in which the journalist maintained the telephone number monitored by the National Intelligence Service from June 1 to August 13, 2020.
Furthermore, the statement by the government that the NTA would lead the investigation was not accompanied by any announcement from the Authority itself, which gives rise to a key institutional question: How did the government announce the NTA`s intervention “on its own motion” before the authority itself announced it, with no relevant institutional competence?
Although the current legislation (Law 3115/2003 and Law 4622/2019) outlining the responsibilities of the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE) and the National Transparency Authority (NTA) shows that the ADAE and not the NTA is the body responsible for cases dealing with telecommunications privacy, in this case the government announced that on its own motion, the NTA, an institutionally non-competent authority, will investigate the surveillance of the journalist Koukakis, which could constitute an obstacle to uncovering the truth of the case.
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