All calls from Ankara’s heart tapped for 3 hours

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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In the midst of continuing debates about rules that grant police the right to wiretap communications in Turkey, the scripts of hundreds of cell phone calls were released to the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The Ankara office had applied to the First Criminal Court for one-hour scripts from all cell phone calls made through 25 base stations from three areas in the Kızılay district on Jan. 27, 2009. This search is related to a murder case the office is investigating. The Telecommunication Transmission Directorate, or TİB, an agency that in the past has been criticized for not objecting to demands such as this, objected to the positive response of the court this time, saying: "The ruling should include the name and telephone number of the person who is going to be under surveillance."

Yet, the scripts were delivered to the Prosecutor's Office after the High Court denied TİB’s objection.TİB’s objection to the High Court ruling further read: "Subjects like the identity, type of communication device and the telephone number of the person who would be wiretapped are not included in your rule about scripts from the base station. Hundreds of calls may be made through a base station in a few hours. There are records of calls of hundreds of people who are not the accused or the suspects in the base station scripts. Therefore asking for detailed information on all of the calls from 25 different base stations is against the regulations."

This objection was denied based on a March 10 ruling that read: "Since the rule of the Peace Court of Criminal Jurisdiction is considered just according to the information and documents in the dossier, the objection is denied." Therefore, the High Court disregarded the 135th Article of Law of Criminal Procedure on surveillance of communications, which demands the name and phone number of the suspect be known before a wiretap can be permitted.

The wiretapped areas and the time they were wiretapped are as follows: The caller, the receiver, date and time details from 25 base stations of the cell phone operators Turkcell, Avea and Vodafone were wiretapped on Jan 27, 2009. This occurred between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. for the crossing of Ziya Gökalp and Mithatpaşa Streets, between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. for Tıp Fakültesi Street and between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. for the Zabıta Blocs in the Akdere Mutlu neighborhood. In Kızılay, it is possible that deputies and other government officials might be among the wiretapped, especially around the streets of Ziya Gökalp and Mithatpaşa. Although the highest ranks of the military and government officials are known to use cell phones that cannot be wiretapped, those devices are not very common.