Czechs disturbed by reports of widespread police phone-tapping

Czechs have been disturbed recently by reports the country's police force listen in on an incredibly high number of personal phone calls - up to 10,000 a year. What's more the Czech Republic's police chief has dismayed many by seeming to suggest widespread bugging was normal practice, and nothing to concern people with a clear conscience. Radio Prague's Ian Willoughby has been following the story.

Make a phone call in the Czech Republic and there's a relatively high chance Big Brother will be listening. A hundred inhabitants per 100,000 are bugged, compared to say 62 in the Netherlands or 24 in France, according to research by the Max Plank Institute in Germany and the Czech parliamentary committee which oversees police wiretapping.

What's more, the Czech security services now monitor over 10,000 phone lines, four times as many as in the year 2000.

After allegations police listened in on phone conversations involving both the president and the leader of the opposition, police chief Jiri Kolar caused uproar by describing bugging as normal police practice, saying he wouldn't mind if his phone was tapped - if you know you've done nothing wrong there's nothing to worry about, he said. The president has called for his head, but Mr Kolar is so far resisting pressure to resign.

What do ordinary Czechs think about the bugging affair?

Man: "Common people who go to work, who are not doing anything else but working and have connection to criminals - even you could be listened to. That's not a good way."

Woman: "Generally I think that, for example looking around me here on Wenceslas Square, I am sure many people do not have clear minds are standing here. I think we need strong police."

Man: "It is very bad. It is not good for a democratic government. I think the methods are very, very...it's what we had here in the Czech Republic for a long time."

Political commentator Vaclav Zak says the Czech Republic's totalitarian past is one reason many are now concerned about widespread phone-tapping and electronic surveillance. But, he says, the police chief's statements have been distorted and the issue has been blown out of proportion.

"According to all the information we have, the police didn't do anything illegal."

But I have heard that phone-tapping is used more commonly here than in many countries.

"Well, I wouldn't say so. That there should be 10,000 tappings a year - if you take into account that many people who are tapped have five, seven or ten phones a year. In these cases there are around one hundred persons a month. If you take into account the amount of drug smuggling, serious economic criminality, bank cheating etc, I think that it's quite an...adequate amount."

Prime Minister Stanislav Gross has also cautioned against "hysteria" over the phone-tapping affair. He has promised a report on the issue by the New Year.