Investigators say Sonera developed software to spy on personnel e-mail

print this

Police investigating suspected violations of telephone secrecy by the telecommunications company Sonera say that the e-mail unit of the company developed a computer programme to allow easier access to personnel e-mail.
      The company’s security unit wanted the system to find out which members of the company’s personnel had been in touch with representatives of the media. The company also wanted to know if former employees had taken corporate secrets with them when they left the company.
      Police say that employees in the e-mail unit told them about events that took place between 1997 and 2001.
     
The e-mail unit was responsible for the maintenance of the e-mail servers of Sonera’s personnel and its clients. However, police say that only employees of Sonera were targeted in the snooping.
      The investigators say that the security unit only dug up information on the senders, recipients, topics, and the time that the e-mails were sent. Sonera reportedly did not read the content of the mails, although one head of security admitted to having glanced at e-mail attatchments.
     
The security unit of Sonera was interested in personnel e-mail information already in 1997-1998. Those responsible for maintenance of the system said that enquiries increased from the year 2000 onwards.
      "There were so many enquiries that I set up software within the system to make it easier to collect them", one key figure in the case told police.
      According to the investigators, the largest operation was implemented in October 2000, when the security unit once investigated the contacts that about 50 Sonera employees had with the media in a three-day period.
      Juha E. Miettinen, the company’s head of security at the time, said that the operation came at the request of the then-CEO Kaj-Erik Relander, and that it involved the tracing of e-mail, mobile telephone calls, and calls from office telephones.
      When asked by police to comment on the issue, Relander said that Juha Miettinen had tried to work very meticulously.
     
Sonera introduced a new e-mail system in the summer of 2001. At that time the employees of the e-mail unit told the security department that it would no longer be possible to trace e-mail information.
      Finnish law protects the secrecy of e-mail, as well as that of telephone comunications.
      Police are now investigating the e-mail surveillance in connection with its wider investigation into 15 people suspected of aggravated violation of telecommunications privacy.
      A series of trials linked with the scandal is expected to begin in January 2005 at Helsinki District Court.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Security Police leadership suspected of concealing involvement in Sonera snooping (26.8.2004)
  Allegations of illegal tracing of phone records at Sonera to go to trial in autumn (8.4.2004)

Helsingin Sanomat