Greek Blog Aggregator Arrested

arcanumas writes to tell us that Greek authorities have raided the house of Antonis Tsipropoulos, administrator of the blog aggregation site Blogme.gr. His hard drive was seized and he was arrested. The impetus was a satiric website, not named in the stories, that apparently offended a Greek public figure (also unnamed). The site in question was not hosted by Tsipropoulos but was merely linked to by his RSS fed. From the first article: "The developing story coincides with the Internet Governance Forum being hosted in Athens this week, to be attended by Internet luminaries, entrepreneurs, and activists like Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, and Joi Ito and featuring panels on Openness and Freedom of Expression."

Re:Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't trust the results, though--the Greek government will only admit to the existence of minorities specifically mentioned in their international treaties.

Also, their human trafficking record is a good place to look for Human Rights issues.

For a more general picture, consult The Human Rights Watch scoop [hrw.org].

Name of the accusor

[Project2501a]

the name of the suitor is Dimosthenis Liakopoulos, a well-known tv-bookseller and demagogue in Greece, who also "happens" to belong to the ultra-right wing in Greece I'm Greek, and i got to say I find myself being ashamed one more time, after the "Greece bans Videogames" thingie

Re:Greeks will Arrest on ANY Suspicion

[Anonymous Coward]

He's Dmitri Fotiou. His website was a riot. The lack of intelligence of these Greek authorities is amazing - they didn't even check the HTML. That's how bloody incompetent they are.

Fotiou still has to report to the police every month. Incredible. They still insist on holding a trial, despite the fact the situation is totally ridiculous.

See these links for more on the Foutiou story.
http://rixstep.com/1/0/20060505,00.shtml [rixstep.com]
http://rixstep.com/1/0/20060507,00.shtml [rixstep.com]

Visit Dmitri's blog here.
http://fotiou.net/blog2/blogger.html [fotiou.net]

And lest we forget: cellphones were officially illegal in Greece at the time of the 2004 Olympics and a representative of the Greek embassy in London at the time was quoted as saying:

"If you know they are illegal then don't bring them into our country."

Both the Fotiou and the spammer/programmer cases are still wide open; in the latter case (which was repeatedly reported to Slashdot at the time but was ignored) the forensic lab returned "no evidence" over ten months ago and still nothing happens - and a simple phone call before calling out the National Guard would have resulted in laughs all around; in the Fotiou case a simple inspection of the HTML would have shown it was all a joke as well. These people are simply too much.

But in Greece that which is a joke is not funny and that which should be taken seriously is a joke. It is the height of hypocrisy and effrontery that this conference be held in this country - a country moreover where over 100 top cabinet and other officials let themselves be spied on through their cellphones for over two years, and where the whistle blower, initially silenced, later committed suicide, and where the government have done everything in their power to hush things up ever since.

Greece is not only one of the most corrupt governments and societies in the world; it is also one of the most clumsy and confused.

AnoNet

[Anonymous Coward]

To those who feel they might be unjustly persecuted, AnoNet has helped immensely in the direction of anonymity - http://anonetnfo.brinkster.net/ [brinkster.net]

Re:Name of the accusor

[Etz Haim]

And what a guy Liakopoulos [wikipedia.org] is...

Re:Freedom of Speech

[LabRatty]

You may not be near a dictatorship, but you are not as good as you seem to think you are. And certainly not better than the UK.

Freedom of the press survey - http://www.worldaudit.org/press.htm [worldaudit.org]

Including democracy and corruption figures - http://www.worldaudit.org/democracy.htm [worldaudit.org]