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In the year 2007, when it became clear that the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), was on a �no retreat, no-surrender,� mission to offload a chunk of Ghana Telecom to UK-based Vodafone, many Ghanaians sounded the alarm bells. One of the key arguments raised was that telecommunication is a strategic national resource in this technological era that entrusting it into the hands of foreigners had the potential of exposing and making us vulnerable to security breaches. The questions asked included: how can we be sure that key state institutions and officials would not be communicating directly into the ears of foreigners. What many did not know at the time was that the UK-based company, Vodafone, which was to gain dominance over Ghana�s national telecom network, had long been caught eavesdropping on officials of Greece, where their subsidiary operated. In 2006, evidence emerged that phone lines of key government, security, and other officials, including foreign nationals, had been tapped at three of Vodafone�s hubs (call centers) between 2004 and 2005. Among the 160 people, whose conversation were listened to, were Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, many of his cabinet ministers, the heads of the armed forces, top and Olympic security officials. Some other persons whose phones were tapped included the Foreign, Defense, and Justice ministers, as well as top security operatives. One Friday, March 10, 2006, George Koronias, Vodafone Greece�s CEO, testified before a parliamentary committee to explain his firm�s role in the operation to eavesdrop on the country�s political and military elite, a scandal that was to assume Olympian proportions. In spite of the 10-hours he testified before the committee, Koronias failed to convince members that the UJ-based operator bore no responsibility for Greece�s biggest spy scandal. Greece authorities told the public in February 2006 that Vodafone�s facilities had been used to tap calls from sometime in 2004 to March 2005. Koronias denied that Vodafone had the technical know-how to install the spy software and laid the blame at the doors of Ericsson. He told the committee that as manufacturer of Vodafone�s telecom infrastructure, including legal interception software, the Swedish company (Ericsson) would have been able to install illicit bugging devices into the system. �Only Ericsson�s staff could have set up such a device,� he had said. This submission provoked Ericsson to furiously counter by saying that Vodafone not only knew about the illegal software but had activated it at the request of British intelligence agents. The Vodafone CEO, according to investigators, failed to alert the Greek independent security authorities, Watchdog, when the listening devices were found. Worse still, he dismantled the taps, thereby making it difficult to trace the source of the tapping. Businessmen and journalists were also not spared by the phone tapping extravaganza of the British Telecom Operator. There are simmering concerns whether Ghana possess the technology to monitor the activities of Vodafone in Ghana so as to prevent the public from being targets of such sophisticated espionage activities. Vodafone�s acquisition of 70% of Ghana Telecom shares, which was recently the subject of investigations by a ministerial committee, has come under strong criticism. According to intelligence journals, the software used in the wiretapping was very sophisticated and was beyond the detection of Greek Intelligence agencies. The NPP Member of Parliament (MP) for Agona-Odoben-Brakwa, Mr. P.C. Appiah-Ofori, recently alleged that members of his party were paid bribes in order to get them to approve of the contract that sealed the deal with Vodafone. The Vodafone scandal in Greece appalled its citizens who visited their anger on the ruling party. The conservative�s popularity rating took a heavy blow as polls show around 67 per cent personally blame Prime Minister Karamanlis for his handling of the affair. Because the antennae that relayed the calls to the recording equipment were close to the US embassy, many also began to speculate that the �Big Brother� in this spy activity is the CIA. Koronias appeared to confirm those suspicions, telling the parliamentary committee that the surveillance system required people with expertise in a number of hi-tech areas �as well as plenty of money�. More tellingly, the US embassy�s former political counselor John Brady Kiesling, also pointed the finger at Washington. The CIA�s fingerprints were all over operation, he said.� Everything points to the US embassy,� said Kiesling, who left the State Department in disgust over the Iraq war. �Nobody else would have, or be interested in, a list [of people tapped] that would look like that.� Then, as if reading from a manual on how to commit commercial suicide, the CEO told the committee it was feasible that all Vodafone�s communications centres had been decked out with wiretaps prior to the Olympics games in Athens-Greece.He also admitted that Kostas Tsalikides, a top technician at the company- found dead a day after Vodafone reported the wiretaps to the government last March � may have stumbled across the high-tech surveillance devices. His death, the focus of a judicial probe, was seen as key to solving the mystery of the �Greek Watergate�. �Tsalikides could, in his position at the company [as network planning manager] have located the illegal software,� Koronias conceded.