The legally unmotivated interception of phone calls and checks on the bank accounts of some people and companies are both a real menace on democracy and a coup against national security, when they become complex indeed. Now I am taking distance from the Rompetrol case context, that has got me involved for some Stock Exchange business I have in the open. I can only see that Big Brother is jeopardizing us all. It is both normal and necessary that in lawful circumstances the Romanian Secret Service should intercept the phone calls of some people suspected of being several dangers for national security. They are either participants in terrorist activities or activities against state integrity or actors in organizations guilty of economic-financial crimes, or they are involved in high corruption cases. It happens everywhere in the world. But it is unacceptable that other institutions should intercept phone calls separately from the Romanian Secret Service. The secret service in the Ministry of Justice had done it before getting sacked. Or maybe the secret service in the Interior Ministry has done it too. The staff employed by such institutions and intercepting phone calls should be investigated and sentenced in a state of law. This happens to any person, even to a journalist recording somebody else's phone calls. I am convinced that the Romanian Secret Service, suspected of such a thing for so many years now, established a set of standard procedures to turn unauthorized interception into an unlikely or even impossible mission. When the Romanian Secret Service proceeds to interception to obey order from Justice, it is to be assumed that this service lacks the quality needed for deciding to what extent the request from prosecutors, artificially assimilated to magistrates, is legal or not. The Romanian Secret Service can only suppose prosecutors are not mad, therefore they are not deliberately breaking the law. Therefore the overtly illegal interception that Romanian society is so interested in today is because of some "servants" of the law. They will probably be sanctioned by courts, after being sued. As far as this is concerned, nothing is new in the world. Illegal orders of phone call interception to some secret services has existed at upper levels too. Even in the US, one scandal and one inquiry on the interception of eight people's phone calls are now going on. The excessive zeal of some prosecutors or even magistrates under political pressure leads to law breaking everywhere. And it usually gets harsh sanctions. Then what is different in Romania? The vastness of the interception phenomenon. Nowhere in the world, except for Romania, does Justice allow continuous violation of people's privacy and business secrets. On the other hand, there is also the total number of people whose phone calls are intercepted, as compared to the total number of citizens a secret service in Romania is to take care of. This is an apocalyptic phenomenon in Romania. And nobody has wondered yet how come all such requests are automatically approved by prosecutors or judges specializing in reaching verdicts at command. When the figures are released, the civil society, the political class and both national and international public opinion will be amazed. In a country where there are many dangerous financial-economic crimes and much corruption, the huge number of bugged phones and people watched has not caused criminality to diminish, which is both worrying and symptomatic. It means that either interception has been useless or it has had a different purpose. Either political or competition-related. It also goes for checks on bank accounts. These days the press is disclosing thousands of such accounts under control, belonging to both people and companies. They are 153, related to one single criminal case. But there are some hundred or even thousands of criminal cases in progress. Everything is probably under control. But what for? In what purpose? Big Brother's policy may lead us to a dead end, to a crisis. But it can in no way lead us to Europe. Civil society and politicians should normally respond strongly and at once.

Sorin Rosca Stanescu