The National Intelligence Service (EYP) eavesdropped on almost 1,400 people this year but this played a significant role in tackling organized crime and domestic terrorism, CitizensÂ’ Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis told Parliament on Friday.
Papoutsis said EYP had bugged 778 people in 2010 and 1,392 this year. He added that another 500 wiretapping operations were currently being carried out by secret service agents. Papoutsis defended the operations, saying EYP had helped in numerous cases.
“I believe that thanks to EYP’s involvement, along with the setting up of the financial police and the continuing work of the electronic crimes squad, we have managed to trace a number of organized crime and terrorist gangs.”
Responding to questions about EYPÂ’s procedure for eavesdropping, the minister said that agents obtain permission from both the judiciary and the privacy watchdog before listening in on conversations.
The crime of espionage once conjured images of dark street corners, fedora-wearing spies and government agents who stayed in the shadows, rarely seeing the inside of a public courtroom.
These days, the game has changed. The same agents are now looking for different kinds of spies, ones who increasingly threaten corporate America — while they’re working within it.
The crime is called economic espionage and it has catapulted to one of the top federal law enforcement priorities in the country.
It often involves American-based employees who burrow into company computer systems, steal prized trade secrets and hand over the information to overseas competitors for tens of thousands — even millions — of dollars.
The FBI has placed economic espionage on both a national and local level second on its list of priorities, right behind fighting terrorism.
That’s because the potential for damage is severe, law enforcement officials say, with the potential loss to companies in the tens of billions of dollars and, according to one expert, growing at a rate of 9 percent a year.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. Army charged an Alaska-based soldier Monday with attempted espionage, saying he communicated and transmitted national defense information to someone he believed was a foreign intelligence agent.
According to the charges, 22-year-old Spc. William Colton Millay of Owensboro, Ky., intended to aid a foreign nation.
“Millay had access to the information through the course of his normal duties both stateside and on a previous deployment, and although the information was unclassified, Millay believed that it could be used to the advantage of a foreign nation,” according to a description of the charges released by Army officials.
Officials would not identify the country Millay believed the so-called agent represented or if their investigation involved a sting operation. Millay was assigned to a combat tour in Iraq from December 2009 to July 2010, and he served in Korea, according to information provided by the Army.
(CNN) — The attorney representing the 22-year-old Kentucky soldier charged with attempted espionage and communicating military information said Tuesday that his client told him he is innocent.
“Generally speaking, yes — that he is not guilty of attempted espionage or spying against the United States,” Stephen Karns said of what the solider told him.
Spc. William Colton Millay of Owensboro, Kentucky, was charged this week with attempted espionage and communicating military information, allegations that have shocked friends who have described him as a patriotic country boy.
The formal charges were issued 10 days after Millay was arrested at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, said Col. Bill Coppernoll, the public affairs officer at the base.
A U.S. Army specialist from Kentucky who was serving as a military policeman has been arrested at an Alaska military base on suspicion of spying, an Army spokesman said on Tuesday.
Specialist William Colton Millay was taken into custody at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on October 28 following a joint espionage investigation conducted by the FBI and Army Counterintelligence special agents, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Bill Coppernoll said.
Coppernoll did not say who Millay, of Owensboro, Kentucky, was suspected of spying for or what sensitive information he may have had access to. He said the investigation was ongoing.
