Last week, Minister for Citizen Protection Michalis Chrysochoidis proudly announced the establishment of a new and very important institution he named the the “Greek FBI”. Today, the police union denounced in a statement the the names and the registration numbers of 554 officers assigned to the Greek FBI have been leaked to the press and published on a news website.
The police officers now fear for their lives.
“It starts in a few days. It has already started, but the new service is now being established. A service I believe the country needed. A service that Greek society needs to fight another form of violence…” Chrysochoidis had said a week ago.
And then the big fiasco even before the premier of the new super service the “Greek FBI” that cannot even protect its own people.
All the names of 554 police officers who will staff the “FBI” have been published including their registration number.
According to media reports, the Greek Police had drawn up documents with the transfers of 554 police officers to services in Athens and Thessaloniki, in order to establish the new department. However, the relevant organizational chart that reached the emails of dozens of services did not take any care to safeguard the employees’ personal data.
It is assumed that secrecy is a prerequisite for these investigations which must be carried out in the total darkness of the Media (and not only).
Thus, even if the publication was withdrawn, all the names, even the Registration Number, became known, which poses serious security problems for the staff.
Now the Ministry of Citizen Protection investigates how the leak happened!
To understand the magnitude of the “disaster”: It is about 554 names, with the police officers working under cover to see their private data being sent without protection to several service departments and even be published online.
Police angry reaction
“There is also a danger to their lives. Some people don’t understand that with the publication of these names and their details, there is a danger even for their lives,” the press representative of the Greek Police, Constantia Dimoglidou, told ANT1 TV on Thursday morning.
Dimoglidou noted that “these people are called upon from now on to manage various cases of organized crime, very dangerous criminals. It is unacceptable to make it public.” She added that “this particular order has reached many services, obviously it will be investigated where the leak came from.”
“The silence of the Leadership has been deafening until now,” stressed the Union of Police Employees of Athens in a statement issued immediately after the leak, criticizing the Ministry’s silence on this grave issue.
“We, as the Union of Police Employees of Athens, we denounce the publication-leakage of personal information of hundreds of our colleagues from a certain website”, the statement said adding:
“We do not care at all if it is a mistake or if some people considered the publication as ‘exclusive information’, all that concerns us is the conclusion, since the exact details of police officers of a newly established Service which in the future will play an important role in the fight of crime, became accessible to everyone.”
In cooperation with the union’s legal department “we are already processing the recourse to the appropriate legal actions to protect our members,” the statement stressed.
PS No, the Minister in charge, Michalis Chrysochoidis, has not resigned, so far. Thanks for asking.
Welcome to The Muppet Show.