Greece pledges to ban Spyware sales as Dutch MEP publishes draft report

After a European Union lawmaker, Sophie in 't Veld, concluded that Greece's government was using Predator spyware indiscriminately against journalists and other public figures, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis pledged that his administration would ban the domestic sale of similar software.

“We will be the first country to tackle this problem and enact legislation that will explicitly ban the sale of such software in our country. No other country has done it. All countries have the same problem,” he said.

Mitsotakis’ government has been at the centre of a scandal about the use of phone surveillance software for months. A domestic investigation has been hobbled by the inclusion of a majority of parliamentarians from the ruling party. The extent of Greek government surveillance appears to have been extensive.

In 't Veld is a member of the European Parliament’s PEGA committee, which was set up earlier this year to look into use of spyware in the bloc, following a series of media reports about the use of surveillance tools against journalists and human rights defenders.

The recently published draft report concludes that surveillance tools, including Predator and Pegasus, produced by Israeli company NSO Group, were being operated unlawfully in Greece as well as in Poland, Hungary, and Spain, and likely also in Cyprus.

In 't Veld accused the European Commission of looking the other way over spyware use and ignoring a “grave threat to democracy.”

The Dutch MEP said the PEGA committee was stonewalled by Greece and other member states. She accused the EU of using “velvet gloves” to deal with its own while getting tough on American technology companies. That, she said, was illustrated in Greece where the New Democracy government, which is accused of compromising the phones of 15,745 people – among them journalists and political rivals. The Greek government had previously denied the allegations.

“We will not find that proof as long as the authorities are not willing to share official information with us,” she said, adding that “everything is pointing in the direction of people in government circles.”

The sale of spyware applications is highly international so the impact of the Greek government’s pledge to ban domestic sales is debatable, notwithstanding that Predator is currently marketed by Intellexa, a company based in Athens.

The draft PEGA report, too, is not without controversy. The committee chair Jeroean Lenears told media that the draft report was “not a final version,' and that the document “cannot – this point be understood as the conclusions or the position of the PEGA committee as a whole."