Midtown Blogger/Manhattan Valley Follies: The State of Wire Tapping in Poland and Other Surveillance- Warsaw Voice

The Warsaw Voice » Society » June 10, 2015

Prosecutors launch probe into leak of taping affair investigation files

June 10, 2015

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Warsaw's district prosecutor's office has launched a probe into the circumstances of the publication of classified investigation files related to the so-called wire-tapping scandal, a spokesman for Warsaw prosecutors, Przemyslaw Nowak said on Tuesday.

A Polish businessman and blogger Zbigniew Stonoga published on his facebook profile Monday night the bulk of investigation files related to the scandal involving Poland’s top officials that broke out last year. Prosecutor's office confirmed that the materials released by Stonoga are authentic.

Jacek Cichocki, chief of the prime minister's chancellery

and an intelligence services coordinator called it the

biggest leak in the Polish history.

“This is a very bad situation,” Cichocki said. The leaks devastate the very order that we should protect. This is devastating for the basic system of institutions.”

Some 2,500 pages of the files including personal data and addresses of officers involved in the investigation were posted on the Internet, by Stonoga. He told Polish public television that he isn’t the source of the leak and is only sharing what he found on servers outside Poland.

The files include full records of interviews with witnesses as well as with senior businessmen and politicians involved in the case.
Some 20 people have had access to the files: the suspects, the plaintiffs and their legal representatives, but under strict condition of confidentiality. Publication of such material is punishable by up to two years in prison.

The wire-tapping affair broke out in June 2014 when the Wprost weekly magazine published secret recordings of conversations between Poland's top government & non-government officials and businesspeople made by waiters of a few Warsaw restaurants.

The leak diminishes the importance of the institutions of the state Sejm Speaker Radosław Sikorski, who was also involved in the wire-tapping affair said.

Politicians of the conservative opposition party Law and Justice (PiS) have called for setting up a parliamentary investigative commission to find out how the files became public.