Greek government spied on Meta employee for more than a year

For a year, the Greek intelligence service has been listening to the phone conversations of Artemis Seaford, a security officer at Meta. The New York Times reports this with reference to documents obtained from officials. By the way, this is the first known case of a U.S. citizen being persecuted in a European Union country.

«This shows that the illegal use of spyware goes beyond its use by authoritarian governments against opposition figures or journalists. It has begun to penetrate European democracies. It has trapped a foreigner working for a large global corporation,» The New York Times writes.

Predator spyware was installed on Seaford’s smartphone. NYT journalists found out that the software is manufactured in North Macedonia and sold by an Athens-based company.

The woman found out that she was being monitored after the Greek media published an investigation. Digital forensics experts from Citizen Labs later confirmed the presence of malware on Seaford’s smartphone. It is still unclear why she was targeted for political surveillance.

Meanwhile, the Greek government denies using Predator for espionage purposes. «The Greek authorities and security services have never purchased or used surveillance software,» said Greek government spokesman Yanis Ikonomou. — «The alleged use of this software by non-governmental organizations is under judicial investigation.»

European Union lawmakers have launched their own investigation into the incident. Meta has not yet commented on the incident.