E-mail messages among key prosecution evidence at Sonera trial

Suspects disagree on who knew about call tracing activities

Kaj-Erik Relander

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Messages printed out of the e-mail system of the telecommunications service provider Sonera are among key prosecution evidence in the trial involving allegations of misuse of telephone records. The trial begins on Monday.
      Police have confiscated e-mail messages recorded on backup tapes. Evidence has also been sought in searches at homes and workplaces.
      The prosecution also plans to bring a number of current and former Sonera employees to the witness stand.
     
About 15 e-mail messages have been seized in the main branch of the investigation, involving suspicions that top figures in Sonera had illegally looked into the mobile telephone records of employees to find the source of a leak of information on Sonera activities to the press.
      Investigators had to resort to tracing down e-mail, because potentially incriminating telephone records had already been destroyed.
      With the help of the e-mails, the prosecution hopes to establish that Sonera's corporate security department had informed deputy CEO Kaj-Erik Relander and communications head Jari Jaakkola that the internal snooping was underway already in the autumn of 2000.
      For instance, the head of the security department, Juha E.Miettinen wrote to Relander in the autumn of 2000 that he was looking for the source of the leak by examining the records of the company's billing system.
     
"I have launched an investigation concerning the source of the news (reported by) Harri Vatanen of Helsingin Sanomat ... not all information from October 17th to 19th has been transferred from the telephone exchanges to the billing systems, so we will have access to the information on Monday (23.10) at the earliest", the e-mail reads.
      The billing systems reveal the telephone numbers that a phone subscriber has been in contact with, the duration of the calls, and the base station that the telephone was connected with.
      Under the law, a telephone service provider must respect the confidentiality of telephone records.
     
Miettinen later writes in an e-mail he sent to Relander and Jaakkola that no connections with Sonera were found in the mobile phone records of the Helsingin Sanomat journalist. Miettinen added that he would continue his investigation "by looking for information of other possible individuals and the Helsingin Sanomat telephone exchange."
      However, the police could not determine in their investigation if the information from the Helsingin Sanomat exchange had been investigated, and whom it might have affected.
     
The defendants, who face prosecution for aggravated violation of communications privacy, have a completely different version of the significance of the messages sent by Miettinen.
      Security chief Miettinen says that the messages clearly indicate that the top administrators of Sonera were well aware of how the investigation into the leaks was taking place.
      Relander says that he does not remember reading the e-mails, which he nevertheless sees as normal reporting. He maintains that there has been no indication that anything questionable had taken place in the matter.
      Jaakkola had also told the investigators that he did not remember the messages very clearly. Both Relander and Jaakkola said that they had assumed that Miettinen's investigative methods were legal and proper.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Six Sonera executives charged in Sonera phone record scandal (4.1.2005)

Helsingin Sanomat