Keeping tabs leads in tap requests

Monitoring telephone calls has become a source of hope for cheated spouses around the country seeking to file for divorce. The Telecommunication Transmission Directorate, or TİB, which oversees wiretaps, has received more than 20,000 applications for monitoring calls.

TİB has rejected the spousal applications with the justification that "the law for monitoring calls is only valid for use in a penal court." Spouses who want to file divorce cases but lack evidence to prove infidelity have tried to get their partners’ telephone calls monitored. Photographs and text messages are also being offered to courts as evidence of infidelity.

Courts that deal with divorce cases take the applications seriously and transfer them to the directorate, said TİB President Fethi Şimşek. He said they had received more than 20,000 applications from family courts and had rejected all of them because wiretapping is legal only if ruled by a penal court, according to Article 135 of the law for penal courts.

TİB sometimes faces tough times with persistent judges from family courts. Some judges filed lawsuits against TİB officials for denying a court order. Şimşek said they received a statement from the Justice Ministry and sent it to the family courts that have not stopped applying for wiretaps. Şimşek said it would be a violation of privacy if they started to monitor people’s calls because of their spouse’s suspicions. However, Şimşek added that the number of people who have their calls monitored will increase. Recently, it authorities declared that "one in every 1,000" has their calls monitored.

According to Şimşek, in addition to applications from family courts, they receive requests to access data from mobile phone base stations. "We also deny most of them. When you identify the numbers that have used a base station for a whole day, you get data on thousands of mobile phone users, related or unrelated," he said. "This would be a violation of privacy."

Serious cases
Şimşek said they accept those requests for short time periods when there is a critical investigation with solid evidence. "Let us say there is a murder and witnesses saw the murder suspect using a cell phone. The time of the murder is known, and the base stations in the area are known. When you check the calls at that time, you have the chance to apprehend the suspect. In those cases, we share information."