“Whoever, to discover the secrets or violate the privacy of another, without their consent, seizes their papers, letters, e-mails or any other documents or personal effects, intercepts their telecommunications or uses technical devices for listening, transmission , recording or reproduction of sound or image, or any other communication signal, will be punished with prison terms of one to four years and a fine of twelve to twenty-four months. “
That is, can operators or police hear us? No, except for judicial resolution. In that case, we can consult the Criminal Procedure Law where it is collected.
- The judge may order the detention of the private, postal and telegraphic correspondence that the defendant sends or receives and its opening and examination, if there are indications of obtaining by these means the discovery or verification of any important fact or circumstance of the cause.
- Likewise, the Judge may agree, in a reasoned resolution, the wiretapping of telephone communications of the defendant, if there are indications of obtaining by these means the discovery or verification of any important fact or circumstance of the cause.
- Similarly, the Judge may agree, in a reasoned resolution, for a period of up to three months, extendable for equal periods, the observation of postal, telegraphic or telephone communications of the people on whom there are indications of criminal responsibility, as well as of the communications used to carry out their criminal purposes.
Therefore … Yes, they can listen to your calls or “tap” them as you have seen so many times in the movies, but as long as there is an order from a judge and not by decision of the Police or the Civil Guard. Also, not all wiretaps are going to be legal or useful in court.
How they collect from the specialized web Burovoz, wiretapping may be intended for the purpose of prosecuting a crime but what happens i serve to know the commission of another. That is, they are listening to someone because they have committed X but the eavesdropping shows or proves that they have committed Y.
Can they be used as proof for this second? Although there are many nuances and edges in the matter, the police must open a new criminal case and bring it to the attention of a judge if they have discovered another criminal act while investigating the first one. But, as usual in these cases, there are many exceptions and possibilities and the rule will not always apply generally. It will depend on the specific case. What is common is that these wiretaps will be valid in trials or investigations, but the authority in charge cannot dispose of them freely. You cannot use them to send them to the press, you cannot “forward” them in WhatsApp messages to friends (of course) or post them on the Internet.
How they sound
Once it has been clarified when they can or cannot listen to us, it is convenient know how to do it. There are various methods of espionage or technology that can be used once this has been authorized. Logically, and as we have explained before, that a policeman is bored at his job and wants to hear what you are talking about is not possible. There must be a few formalities, approve eavesdropping. And, once approved, proceed with some of the wiretapping systems that are used now in Spain.
SITEL
SITEL is the wiretapping system used by the Ministry of the Interior in Spain. It is used by the National Police and the Civil Guard and share equipment with the CNI (National Intelligence Center) SITEL stands for Integrated Telecommunications Interception System and was unveiled in the early 2000s.
But how do you use or access SITEL? In order to access this system, an agent of the Judicial Police must make the request to the court related to an investigation in progress of a serious crime. As we say, in Spain the SITEL has existed since 2003, which is the wiretapping system of the Ministry of the Inside, and which is used by the National Police, the Civil Guard and the Customs Surveillance Service. In order to access this system, an agent of the Judicial Police must make the request to court in connection with an ongoing investigation of a felony.
From there, the operator receives the request, analyzes it, and proceeds to intercept the calls of the alleged offender, giving permission to a legally authorized person to carry out the wiretaps. Thanks to this, you can listen to phone calls, as well as read the SMS sent and received. It was approved by the PP in 2001 and launched in 2003 due to delays in the introduction of the systems by operators.
However, with the messaging applications and VoIP calls, things have become very complicated. When WhatsApp did not encrypt messages, it was possible to access them, but since encryption is used both in sending messages and in calls, the Police had no way of intervening those communications; not even with the arrival of the Evident X-Stream, which we will explain below.
Evident X-Stream
The evolution of SITEL is this system that is designed to don’t get obsolete with calls through social networks such as WhatsApp, Skype or Telegram. We know that technically you can collect calls, SMS, chat conversations, browsing history, written messages on the Internet, emails, calls via VoIP, downloaded files, etc. In addition, it can do Deep Packet Inspection, analyzing packet by packet the communications sent and received by a person, in a similar way to KeyScore, used by the NSA.
However, all communication that is encrypted over the network cannot be broken. For this reason, the communications made by HTTPS on the network, the chat messages or the encrypted VoIP calls in messaging applications They may not be intercepted even if the Police so wishes or authorized by a judge. But everything else is.
In fact, Telegram has a function when a call is made, and that is that you will see that they appear four emojis that change with every call at the top right of the screen, and the other person should have them on their screen. Otherwise, it would imply that someone is accessing the call, so if you want to verify that no one is “clicking” on that call, ask the interlocutor if they have the same emojis as you at that moment.
What SITEL and Evident X-Stream do currently allow is to obtain a report from a person, collecting calls and archiving them, or create a location history based on where that person has been, as well as who they have spoken to. Too offers real-time alerts when a call is received. An IMSI Catcher can also be used for calls, which can downgrade the network used to 2G and take advantage of vulnerabilities to spy on calls, as Villarejo himself used.
Call recordings as evidence in trials
What if we are the ones who take the recorded call and not the police who intercept them? Can we, in that case, use it as evidence in court? It depends. You have seen it in movies but there are many nuances and it will not always be accepted as evidence. Evidence of recorded calls will be allowed as long as there is no coercion, provocation or deception of the person being recorded. Also, you must be part of the conversation, the recording subject is an active part. That is, it is not valid as proof that you record your neighbor talking to your neighbor but that you must be part of the conversation. Even so, they will not always admit it and there are many nuances that can cause this test to be defeated.
Another requirement is that it be related to the matter being reported or brought to trial. The lawyer Juan Antonio Salmerón explained it to us in another report to ADSLZone: “If private or sensitive conversations are used but where the main issue on which the trial is not dealt with, they can annul said evidence for violating the fundamental rights of that person who also participates in the conversations ”.
Although this, of course, has nothing to do with the access of the police in case it is necessary to tap a telephone because there will be no other “remedy” but to listen all the conversations of that person or presumed guilty until finding evidence or something that incriminates him and that may be useful.