Once before the Olympics (Greece paid hundreds of millions of dollars to a US military contractor that delivered nothing but junk for security equipment) and once more recently (Greece procured jetfighters from the US for a bill that was triple the original agreement) the gov't has had to ante up an immense amount to American military interests, with little to show in return.
This amounts to a tax. And we all know, that once you start to feed the beast, the beast will begin to take an interest in the source of its next meal. The real question is, didn't the Greek gov't expect this kind of eavesdropping?
Vodafone, who owns it?
Vodafone is nominally a UK company, but it has large interests in the US market and is quoted on the FTSE and NYSE.
I'm a bit tired, so maybe I am misreading it, but the operations seems to have been undertaken at a relatively local level. Bribing/blackmailing the 2 or 3 employees necessary to do this is within the ability of most foreign governments.
Also I can't think of many foreign governments with interests broad enough to be concerned about government figures, military officials, journalists, Arab businessmen, anarchists and human rights groups. Actually I can think of one (OK maybe two). The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake
But, I don't know if we have enough detail to say whether this is corruption of Vodafone at a low or a high level. As you say it's not a completely simple operation, but having worked in a large telco, it doesn't sound to me that hard to do either.
This is not to say that Vodafone is innocent, but just to remind us that if it is low level stuff then it can (and will) be done at any company, not just "cooperative" ones.
