The Prague Post Online: Opinion: Spies who never came in from the cold

October 7th, 2008

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Spies who never came in from the cold

Mobile phone scrambling and office bugs mean big business for Czech companies
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August 1st, 2007 issue

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By Claude Salhani

So you assumed that spying on private citizens went out of style with the old communist regime? Well, think again, comrades. Old habits die hard.

Regimes may come and go. Political systems may change; the left may be replaced by the right, or it could be the other way around. But the fact remains that the men and women who find themselves in charge, be they in government or large corporations, all have an insatiable need for intelligence.

When you say “intelligence,” you mean spies.

According to folks at Probin, a Prague-based security technology company (profiled in “10 Questions with Jiří Schmidt,” Business, July 18–24) the practice of snooping is not only still in practice in the Czech Republic, but appears to be a growing business. I guess you could call it Big Brother Meets Capitalism — and flourishes.

Between 2005 and 2006, the number of police wiretappings in the Czech Republic increased by 200, from 7,300 to 7,500. Granted, it’s far from being an astounding number in a country with a population of 10.3 million people.

But, given the pivotal role the Czech Republic plays as a crossing point between Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, it should come as no surprise that security forces should remain vigilant.

While Eastern Europe has so far been spared from acts of terrorism such as those suffered by the United States Sept. 11, 2001, by the United Kingdom July 7, 2005, or by Istanbul, Jakarta, Karachi and dozens of other cities in recent years, it makes sense that the country’s security services would want to track and monitor the telephone calls made by certain individuals.

Still, caution against unwarranted wire tapping should be the order of the day.

In its 2006 annual report, the Czech Personal Data Protection Office (ÚOOŽ) warned against excessive use of cameras, insufficient protection against police wiretapping leaks and other risks of interference in private life.

In recent years cameras have appeared not only on the streets, but also in schools, hospitals, churches, apartment houses and factories. The ÚOOŽ discovered in its audits that in a majority of cases the use of surveillance cameras was unnecessary. In one instance, cameras were used to control the observance of employee work hours. In another case, a school headmaster wanted to know if teachers were using school premises for personal activities.

It turns out the big money in the spying business lies more in the private sector than in the James Bond–style “for God and country” type of espionage.

In fact, figures released by the Interior Ministry show an increase in the number of “spying devices” being used. By that, they mean wiretaps and other listening devices.

Becoming a victim of police interest doesn’t take very much, according to Probin, even if you have done nothing illegal. A recent news report indicated that the ministry tapped 46 mobile phones, and that some of the phone numbers had nothing to do with their investigation.

So what guarantees are there that your phone is not one of the 46? Think again about what you were about to say the next time you pull your mobile phone out of your pocket.

If you don’t worry about what you say, a good number of other people do.

Probin says they “sweep” more than 20,000 square meters (215,278 square feet) of office space for eavesdropping devices every year. It was started by Schmidt in July 1997 and a former Interior Ministry employee, who was described as “a significant asset” because of his years of experience with spying protection technologies.

Probin says its clients fall into two basic groups: first, major state organizations and government agencies, and second, large corporations where industrial spying has been around almost as long as there has been industry.

The growth of private companies in the Czech Republic has raised the need for security and contributed toward more spying among large corporations. They’re usually looking for technology shortcuts, trying to find out what their competition is doing, or looking for information to protect themselves from others trying to break into their systems.

Before 1989, spying was almost exclusively the reserve of the state security services and party apparatchiks. With no competition under communism, businesses had no reason to turn to espionage, as was the trend in the West.

Espionage technology changes happen at an incredibly rapid pace, however, forcing those in the industry to adapt or perish. Now there are new developments in frequency hopping, GSM phone taps and e-mail bugs.

The big request now is for GSM phones equipped with scrambling capabilities.

According to Probin co-founder Schmidt, Hollywood has given the wrong impression of the spying industry. He says most people believe what they see in the movies — that a sexy blonde can sit down in front of a computer and crack its code in less than five seconds. As a result, he adds, Czechs and others in the Czech Republic are willing pay tens of thousands of crowns to have their offices swept for bugs, but will refuse to pay 5,000 or 6,000 Kč for a mobile phone with scrambling capabilities.

So the next time you make a phone call and think someone is listening, indeed, they probably are.

— The author is international editor and a political analyst with United Press International in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at claude@upi.com.

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