Subject: [AthofSV] Vatican spies

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 21:14:55 EDT

Electronic Spying Threatens Vatican Secrecy
By AIDAN LEWIS and JIM KRANE | Associated Press Writers
Orlando Sentinel 
Posted April 11, 2005

VATICAN CITY -- Computer hackers, electronic bugs and supersensitive 
microphones threaten to pierce the Vatican's thick walls next week when cardinals 
gather in the Sistine Chapel to name a papal successor. 

Spying has gotten a lot more sophisticated since John Paul was elected in 
1978, but the Vatican seems confident it can protect the centuries-old tradition 
of secrecy that surrounds the gathering. 

"It's not as if it's the first conclave we've handled," said one official, 
speaking on condition of anonymity. 

Vatican security refused to discuss the details of any anti-bugging measures 
to be used during the conclave. But Giuseppe Mazzullo, a private detective and 
retired Rome policeman whose former unit worked closely with the Vatican in 
the past, said the Holy See will reinforce its own experts with Italian police 
and private security contractors. 

"The security is very strict," Mazzullo said. "For people to steal 
information, it's very, very difficult if not impossible." 

Thousands of reporters will be watching as the 115 cardinals gather in the 
Sistine Chapel on April 18. Hackers and government informants may also be 
monitoring the conclave. 

The temptations to spy will be immense. The papal election will likely see 
keen competition, notably between reformers and conservatives. It is also 
expected to witness a strong push for the first non-European pope. 

Revelations of the proceedings could prove embarrassing to the Vatican. For 
instance, sensitive discussions on a papal candidate's stand on relations with 
Muslims or Jews, recognizing China rather than Taiwan or views on 
contraception would be sought-after by governments or the press. 

John Paul was sensitive to meddling from outside. He spent his formative 
years in Soviet-run Poland under pervasive government spying. The Turkish gunman 
who shot him in 1981 was suspected of ties to the Soviets, a regime later 
brought down by forces the pope openly supported. 

In 1996, John Paul set down rules to protect cardinals from "threats to their 
independence of judgment." Cell phones, electronic organizers, radios, 
newspapers, TVs and recorders were banned. 

The ban on cell phones and personal data organizers makes sense, security 
experts say, since they can be hacked and used to broadcast the proceedings to a 
listener. 

"An eavesdropper can reach into those devices and turn on the microphone and 
turn it into an eavesdropping device," said James Atkinson, who heads a 
Gloucester, Mass., company that specializes in bug detection. "It's extraordinarily 
easy to do." 

Another worry for the Vatican will be rooftop snoops with sensitive 
microphones. Laser microphones can pick up conversations from a quarter-mile away by 
recording vibrations on window glass or other hard surfaces. The Sistine Chapel 
has windows set near the roof. 

"You focus the laser on a window or on a hard object in the room, like the 
glass on a picture," said a New York-based security expert with Kroll, Inc., who 
asked that his name not be used. "When people are talking the glass will 
modulate with the sound of the voice and they can recover the audio." 

Laser microphones can be thwarted with heavy drapes and by masking 
conversations with ambient noise. 

Tougher to root out are tiny bugs: transmitters or recorders as small as a 
coin. 

To handle those, bug-sweeping teams -- acting on the pope's 1996 orders -- 
will need to mount complex sweeps of sensitive meeting areas, taking out 
carpets, poking through chair cushions, opening heating ducts, testing electrical 
wiring, light bulbs and water pipes, Atkinson said. 

The late pope deemed the threat to the conclave serious enough to decree that 
those who break their oaths of secrecy can be cast out of the Roman Catholic 
Church. 

For the first time, however, cardinals voting in the conclave will be free to 
move outside the complex that includes the Sistine Chapel. Previously, 
cardinals were allowed to sleep only in the adjoining Apostolic Palace, but this 
time they will be housed in a $20 million hotel residence, the Domus Sanctae 
Marthae. They will be allowed to use Vatican City chapels for Masses. 

In a sign of nervousness about maintaining secrecy, the College of Cardinals 
decided Saturday to halt interviews with the media. Cardinals had been giving 
interviews, and the clampdown is believed unprecedented. 

"They've assured us there are ways to block all communications and 
conversations," Chicago Cardinal Francis George told reporters earlier in the week. 

But even with precautions, halting a spy inside the Vatican -- perhaps an 
unwitting one -- is probably the toughest threat to block, experts said. 

A spy could import a listening device, or even signal people outside the 
Vatican by a color-coded message. Atkinson suggested using colored smoke or by 
flushing dye down a toilet with a discharge pipe that could be monitored 
elsewhere. 

"Are they going to search all the cardinals to see whether someone bugged 
their spectacles or crucifixes?" asked Giles Ebbut, a surveillance expert with 
the London consultancy Jane's. "The imagination can run riot." 

Associated Press writer Jim Krane reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. 

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-pope-spying,0,3450825.s
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