Illegal phone tapping out of control

23rd October 2009

A scandal over the use of phone tapping has taken more twists and turns with journalists alleging that their conversations have been monitored, and claims that the phones calls of thousands of people each year are subject to a bit of electronic eavesdropping.

The newspaper Rzeczpospolita ran a story that the ABW, Poland’s internal security service, had tapped into the phone calls of Bogdan Rymanowski, a journalist from the independent television network TVN, and other hacks while the agency was monitoring the behaviour of a man called Wojciech Sumliński.

Mr Sumliński, another journalist, was under investigation for allegedly trying to sell parts of an official report.

But there are ...