Wortprotokoll: Sicherheitsbeauftragte bei Meta berichtet, wie sie vom griechischen Geheimdienst abgehört und monatelang mit dem Staatstrojaner Predator überwacht wurde
Good morning, everybody. I’m sure some more colleagues will come in in a minute, but I would propose that we will start the meeting at this point. We have the following interpretation present today. German. English. French. Italian, Greek, Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Slovakian, Bulgarian, Slovenian and Romanian. On the agenda, if there’s no objection, I consider it adopted.
First, who I am as a person. I’m not a politician. I’m not a public figure. I’m not a member of any party. I’m not even a journalist. I’m a private citizen. I’m a citizen of a country with a strong democratic tradition and a formal commitment to the rule of law. If someone like me is here before you today to discuss being targeted with Predator, it seems that no one can reasonably expect to be safe.
Excuse me. We’ve lost the sound, Ms. Seaford. There’s something with your microphone that the last thing we heard was „big“. I’m looking at the technicians. Ms. Seaford, can you hear me? We will try to reboot the connection. The sound quality was good. So. We’ll take a minute. No, we can still not hear you.You’re back. Very good. You know what? The last thing we heard you say was „big“ as in the company you work for. So if you could pick it up for me.I mean, that’s. I don’t know what happened.
Now of course that link was the malicious link that I mentioned earlier. And upon review I realized that it came from a different number that pretended to be the state number and the link pretended to be the official state platform with a very small difference that was virtually imperceptible that directed me to an entirely different domain that contaminated me with Predator.
Now I’ve worked in the security space. I’m very sensitive to the argument that a state needs to weight its national security interest against the right to notice of targets. But given the circumstances of this case, the fact that the right to notice for targets was removed exactly as the scandal was breaking out, that affected so many people, that nobody had any reasonable claim to believe that in their totality can possibly be national security threats.
For three years, people like myself cannot go to the authorities to get information about what happened. This is why this all these leaks have been incentivised as the only way the information can be communicated.
Secondly, of course, a big question mark is, in your case, but also several of the other cases, the reason. In some cases it’s fairly obvious why people have been targeted, why they would be, let’s say, a nuisance or of interest in any case to people putting them under surveillance. In your case, there’s still a big question mark.
And it lasted after my targeting with Predator, which the Predator targeting, that we have confirmed, although it’s possible there were more. It was for a period of about two months in the fall of 2021, but the state wiretap lasted from July 2021, so before the Predator attack, all the way to the summer of 2022. And the maximum time is, in fact a year. So they used the maximum possible time and they renewed it six times because it has to be renewed every two months. It’s a statutory requirement.
Okay, so then you asked me about the article. Okay. So sexism and harassment, huge issue in politics everywhere, especially in Greece. I’m afraid to say it’s a big issue not just in politics, but many aspects of public life and one that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. In my opinion. It’s a different issue, however, to the one we’re discussing today.
The last part was: So there was no attempt to evade the standards, the security standards of Meta platforms to make it possible to use them for surveillance, spyware or to spy on and yes, to get into it for anybody.Thank you. Thank you. I think I understood and thank you for the question. So the first part of the question: Were other Meta employees targeted? To the best of my knowledge, there haven’t been.
The second question is: How, after the revelation of your case, somebody from the government, a minister or somebody or an official has contacted you. So what we see and I ask you to come up with any alternative explanations, because I have also really tried. The other possible explanation is somebody had access to the database of the state that had information to my appointment. Now, this is extremely farfetched. Why? First, because they would have to know I made an appointment in order to go look in the first place.
So I reached out to people in government and said „Listen, there’s this option, right? Like, would you like to make use of it? Shall we set something up?“ I also offered suggestions for the new lawsuit. The point is not, however, what I did. The point is I never heard anything back in any official capacity from anyone in government. Obviously, I know people on a personal basis, but there was no official reaction and I believe that was done in general for victims, which is very saddening.
So, you know, the harassment, the fact that women refusing male advances in positions of power then end up being ousted and ignored if they turn those down. And that systematically creates a problem for women when it happens at scale, given that it’s men that tend to be in positions of power, all that stuff. But that’s meant to describe through my story exemplified is broader issues not go off at any particular individual.
You’ve said that, you know, the evidence basically leads to the fact that there’s some sort of state connection. As you know, the Greek government has denied that it uses Predator. Now, of course, there’s surveillance that’s done by the national authorities for various reasons. I don’t know what those are. There’s a legal framework. In fact, we really have tried very hard and we’re one of the first countries in Europe to legislate that Predator can’t be used at all.
So it saddens me personally very much to be in this position. This is why I hesitated to speak out. One of the reasons alongside my fear. I don’t like being in the position of having to bring bad news about my country to the European Parliament. I don’t like being in the position of having to speak ill about this government that I enthusiastically supported at the beginning. There are papers I wrote, that you can find online in support of this government for foreign publications.
The core of my work at Marta had to do with protecting users, creating and implementing new policies such as policies against bullying and harassment, policies against hate speech, coordinated hate speech and the like by violent networks. It hadn’t really, at its core, to do with spyware. So the part to your second question, honestly, I would love to know this. For me, it’s the worst possible explanation that I was targeted because of this article that I wrote. Condemning sexism is sort of absurd. Is it possible that somebody read it and got worried? Of course, I don’t know who the specific person would be, but there, you know, there are a number of people that tangentially could fear that could be implicated because of what I wrote.
But honestly there should be bipartisan consensus that when things like this happen that put in jeopardy the fundamental rights, fundamental privacy rights of the European Union, that there is bipartisan consensus that something must be done.
By spying me has not only affect my personal private life, which has been under scrutiny for the last five years since I start defending Mr. Puigdemont and his colleagues, but also it has implied discipline. I do a lot of other journal lawyers and also journalists. As a matter of fact, one of the period that I was under espionage, I was held in meetings in Germany with other lawyers in very delicate cases, not related to Spain, which may have endangered those investigations.
And I have no doubt because there are documents to that, to a Supreme Court resolution and there is the statement of the Ombudsman, the Spanish Ombudsman, not only recognising that, but accepting that this is a sensitive case because I’m the lawyer of the Catalan independence leaders, who are member of this chamber. In my opinion, my case is crystal clear, but it’s not different to the case of several other lawyers that were also affected.
No, regarding your first question. No, no, no, I haven’t said that the Spanish government is not responsible for that. I may not have been very clear on that respect, but what I’m saying is that as a lawyer, I do respect the presumption of innocence. And until it’s proven that the Spanish government got was involved in this, I will assume that only certain services were involved, which we have evidence of that.
So if that’s enough to spy a person, this is not a democratic system. And of course, as Ms. Riba i Giner has just said, or for sure, we are not only relying on citizen lab, we all have requested independent, other independent technical evidence and also expert report. Citizen Lab has make a tremendous job and they have been the the the organisation that make aware of this scandal. But they are not the only one who has demonstrated that.
The professional secret, not only man has been affected, but also of the lawyers that are in those meetings with me in Germany and also in Spain and also in the own law firm where I work. I mean, we were all under espionage only by spying through my telephone. And this is quite clear and this is the devastating effect of this espionage, because it’s not only affect me and my family, but a lot of professionals and a lot of victims of different cases.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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