Iliopoulos noted the case of journalist Thanasis Koukakis, who also filed a complaint after discovering in April that his mobile phone had been hacked by the spyware from July 12 to Sept. 24, 2021.

He said the Mitsotakis government passed an amendment into law so that the Authority for Ensuring the Privacy of Communications does not inform citizens if they have been a victim of a malicious practice.

"For this, the government should apologize," Mitsotakis Iliopoulos.

Meanwhile, MEPs of SYRIZA - Progressive Alliance said: "Almost three days after the shocking revelation of Nikos Androulakis about the attempt to monitor his mobile phone through the very expensive Predator malware, and the Greek government is still silent on whether a state agency has this particular spying software at its disposal."

Sophie in't Veld, a Dutch lawmaker and chairwoman of the European Parliament's special committee on spyware, said: "Governments are buying this stuff and it's very, very difficult for them to resist the temptation to use it for political purposes."

EP: Legal Frameworks for Hacking by Law Enforcement: Identification, Evaluation and Comparison of Practices

'Sapere aude'

Greece: Letter to government after spyware surveillance of journalist Thanasis Koukakis | IPI Media - April 22, 2022 |

On April 11 it was first revealed that Koukakis, an investigative journalist for CNN Greece who writes for multiple international publications including Financial Times and CNBC, had his mobile phone infected between July and September 2021 by Predator, an advanced spyware tool developed by a North Macedonian company called Cytrox.

In the wake of the initial revelations, on April 12 government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou suggested the Predator hack had been carried out by an "individual" or private actor and denied that the Greek government had any role in monitoring Koukakis using the spyware tool.

Days later, however, it was revealed that the EYP had itself been carrying out surveillance on Koukakis in June, July and August 2020 for what it said were "national security reasons". Documents show that when the journalist asked the independent Authority for Ensuring the Confidentiality of Communications (ADAE) to confirm whether his phone had been tapped, the EYP stopped the surveillance the same day.

When Koukakis sought to confirm his suspicions about being wiretapped, he did not receive a response from ADAE for a year. During this time, in March 2021 the Greek government passed an amendment which blocked the ADAE, with retroactive effect, from informing citizens if they had been surveilled if it had been carried out under national security grounds, meaning the journalist was blocked from knowing whether or not his phone had been bugged.