Tbilisi. Transparency International Georgia released open letter to the government of Georgia on unchecked telephone tapping made by the Ministry of Internal Affairs via mobile operators.  "Government wiretapping has been a concern in Georgia for the past several years, as highlighted in our recent report on the State of the Internet and the U.S. State Department’s Human Rights Report. ... It is known to us that, several years ago, the Ministry of Interior installed ‘black boxes’ in the server infrastructure of all major telecommunication companies. This allowed the law enforcement bodies and security services to monitor all communications passing through the infrastructure, including text messages, internet traffic and phone calls. Moreover, this infrastructure has not been removed from the servers of mobile operators, since the new government came to power; also, the Ministry of Internal Affairs maintains these black boxes. According to telecom insiders, the authorities have the technical capacity to monitor 21,000 mobile phone numbers at any point in time ...We call on the authorities to immediately remove their black boxes from the infrastructure of telecommunication companies, and ensure that the relations with mobile operators are within a legal and ethical framework”, says the statement. 

Source: transparency.ge