From a non-technical perspective, at least one death may be linked to the incident. A communications expert who was working on the switch apparently commited suicide, but this has been questioned by some.
It was recently concluded that there was no foul play involved in his tragic death. The arguments are convincing enough. However, it has not been concluded yet if he was somehow involved in or had knowledge about the wiretapping, and whether this might have been a factor in his suicide.
were in contact via phone calls and text messages with various overseas destinations, namely the U.S., including Laurel, Md.,
the <snip>
Guess what's just to the east of Laurel, MD... On the other hand, exposing links like that is clumsy -- could it be disinformation?
Yes, it might have been clumsy operation-wise. Clumsiness was involved in last year's incident in Italy: "it was a trail of casual cellphone use that tripped up the 19 purported CIA operatives wanted by Italian authorities in the alleged kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric". http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/28/cia.phonetrail.ap/. On the other hand, no publicly available information has linked the locations of the phones involved in the Greek wiretapping with foreign agencies. Various opinions have been voiced on who might be behind this affair, but no accusations have been made against the US or any other government.
And one of the phones monitored was from the American embassy in Athens -- or is that the disinformation? Or is NSA spying on the embassy? You are in a maze of twisty little spooks, all different.
"One telephone was listed to an inconspicuous Greek-American at the US Embassy. Journalists learned the phone had been lent to the embassy's Greek police security detail." http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060320/kiesling
The attack was very sophisticated, and required a great deal of arcane knowledge. Whoever did it had detailed knowledge of Ericsson switches, and probably a test lab with the proper Ericsson gear. It strongly suggests that Ericsson and/or Vodafone insiders were involved -- my guess is both. But who did it, and why, remains obscure.
The investigation is still ongoing. It will be interesting to read the final report. Alexander Philippou --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@metzdowd.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]