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Greece is set to enhance the powers given to authorities to investigate Internet crimes following a series of defamation suits against the people behind the controversial press-gr news blog, it emerged yesterday.

The Justice Ministry is working on a bill that will give police the right to examine the personal data of anyone suspected of conducting an offense online.

Service providers will also have to take immediate steps to preserve any information that pertains to someone suspected of an electronic crime.

Police will also be allowed to conduct their investigations in real time and not have to wait for an offense to be committed in order to collect information about a suspect.

Authorities came up against a brick wall yesterday in their attempt to find out who had posted an allegedly libelous story on the press-gr blog while using a computer inside Parliament.

The blog has come under scrutiny after more than 150 people filed libel suits against the people that run it. One of the controversial items appears to have been uploaded by an MP or someone else working in Parliament.

However, Parliament’s general secretary Nikos Stefanou said yesterday that the Internet Protocol (IP) address provided by the police is one of 25 that is available to some 1,500 computer users in the House. He also said that there was no system set up to monitor the use of computers in Parliament.

Officers also checked out two other places from where messages were posted on the blog. Both were Internet cafes, one on Syngrou Avenue and one near Syntagma Square.

Press-gr is a news blog that hosts comments on politics, social and diplomatic issues by users who are frequently anonymous and often use abusive language. The blog is hosted by Web search giant Google, which has agreed to help Greek authorities with their enquiries.

UPDATE > March 1, 2008 >>> No threat to blogs, says PM

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis denied yesterday opposition accusations that the government is seeking to clamp down on the freedom of Internet users in the wake of a probe into a news blog that prompted defamation suits from government politicians.

PASOK leader George Papandreou accused the government of «viewing every young person with a computer as a potentially dangerous blogger» after the Justice Ministry announced plans this week to give authorities greater powers to look into possible offenses conducted online.

Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) politician Nikos Voutsis said the government was in danger of «throwing the baby out with the bath water.» «We must not develop a prosecutor’s culture with regard to blogs,» said Voutsis.

Karamanlis said that the government has no intention of reining in the freedom of bloggers to express themselves and that Greece is simply adopting international regulations that it is obliged to make part of its legal framework.

The Mayor of Ayia Napa, a popular tourist resort in southeastern Cyprus, has called for a year-round ban on British troops based on the island following a string of violent incidents in the area involving soldiers.

The move came after nine British soldiers were charged with smashing up a bar and attacking locals. “Under the circumstances we believe it would be better if we declare the whole of Ayia Napa off limits to British soldiers from the bases,” Mayor Nakis Tsokkos said.

Greek-American going to finals

Kalomoira Sarantis, a Greek-American pop singer, will represent Greece at the 53rd Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade with her song “Secret Combination” after being chosen in a public and jury vote late on Wednesday.

The song contest will be held between May 20 and 24. Sarantis first became known in Greece when she won the “Fame Story” talent show in 2004.

Currently the Thessaloniki State Museum of Contemporary Art is catering to the visually impaired, thanks to an innovative, by Greek standards, program titled “Aggizontas tin techni” (Embracing Art).

Members of the Thessaloniki School for the Blind and the Panhellenic Association of the Blind recently enjoyed a guided tour of a new contemporary art exhibition.

Among the visitors was Ioanna, who made her way along Constantin Xenakis’s work, “Keimeno horis logo” (Text with no speach) She noted the artist’s “hieroglyphics,” described the work as rather “abstract” and was informed by the caption (in Braille) about the work’s dimension, title and technique.

The embossed work “read” by Ioanna was the tactile representation of the original work. Placed one next to the other, Xenakis’s original painting is being showcased as part of the Museum’s “Visual Arts Panorama in Greece 2”, an exhibition showcasing 100 works by 80 artists. A group of specialists (including social anthropologists, teachers and art restorers) joined forces with Thessaloniki State Museum of Contemporary Art and Thessaloniki School for the Blind volunteers in order to translate 21 of the works into a hands-on format.

“Not all of the works are appropriate for tactile translation,” said Maria Tsantsanoglou, the Museum’s Director. “We usually select works that can be rendered in an easy and comprehensive manner.”

The Thessaloniki Museum’s initiative is part of an international network of Museums carrying out the “Art Beyond Sight” program, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York and London’s Tate Modern and Victoria and Albert Museum.

Related Links > http://www.greekstatemuseum.com

Irene Jacob and Willem Dafoe in Athens, Theo Angelopoulos makes new movie

The sun was shining brightly at the old Athens airport in Hellenikon earlier in the week. Yet the atmosphere inside one of the buildings remained dark and misty, providing the setting for the filming of Theo Angelopoulos’s new film “The Dust of Time”.

Behind clouds of dry ice, one could make out the sets, the guardhouses of the US and Canadian borders. Those present were transported back to 1974, the time when the leading character, Eleni, interpreted by Irene Jacob, was crossing the borders in search of her son. Willem Dafoe plays the son, as a grownup, who is presently filming his life story.

Shortly before the shooting began, the two actors talked about Angelopoulos’s guidance. The director himself declined making any comments and kept on preparing for the shoot. “Theodoros does not give interviews,” said his protective wife Phoebe Economopoulou, who deals with everything during the filming.

“It is a privilege to be working with Angelopoulos,” said Jacob, who had aged with the help of makeup to fit her role. “It is a moving script that has to do with fragments of history and memory. Handling these concepts in cinema is a challenge and Theodoros does it beautifully, surpassing geographic and chronological borders.”

Dafoe described Angelopoulos’s sense of aesthetics as very personal and specific. “As an actor, I like to obey the director’s vision. Angelopoulos has a very particular vision and makes you feel that your service means something.”

“In Europe, there is more respect for the directors, whereas in the United States it is the actors and producers who have the power. One would expect that as an actor I would prefer America, but I like working for powerful directors,” noted Dafoe, when asked about the differences in working as an actor in the United States and in Europe.

Speaking about how he creates his roles, the actor said it was a combination of improvisation and structure. He insisted that his input in his role in “The Dust of Time” was minimal. “I didn’t create that part. I think it was Michel Piccoli who said that he liked to be a pawn in the director’s hands. Angelopoulos is very specific in how he wants his scenes done. Maybe it is just my taste, but I like to be molded; I enjoy being a pawn in the director’s hands.”

Once the last part of shooting, scheduled to take place abroad, is over, Angelopoulos’s production team will race against time so that the film can be ready for screening at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Greece is converging with the e-Europe indices but the road to meeting European Union penetration levels in information technology is still long, according to the indices for Greece last year.

The data published yesterday by the country’s Observatory for Information Society show that Greece is moving closer to the EU index for companies with more than 10 employees.

There is also a now common “digital profile” between Greeks and other Europeans under the age of 35 years. On the other hand, small companies with up to nine people, which are the majority of Greek enterprises, remain far behind the basic EU standards.

The age group of between 35 and 54 years also lags behind their fellow Europeans in the use of information technology.

The indices show a greater present rate of penetration in Greece than in the rest of the EU. In the 2005-2007 period, the portion of households with access to the Internet at home in Greece had an average increase of 11.7 percent per year, against just 6 percent in the EU.

However, general use of the Internet in Greek households stands at just three-fifths (60 percent) of the EU average and at half that of the old 15 members of the bloc.

After Attica, the regions of the Southern Aegean, Crete and the Ionian Islands have the greatest use of the Internet, which, according to the president of the Observatory, Nikos Christodoulou, is due to the tourism market’s demand for the presence of tourism bodies on the World Wide Web.

Another important finding is that cost is no longer an obstacle to entering the “digital society,” at least compared with the cost in other EU states.

The survey showed that the cost of acquiring a computer in purchase power units is lower in Greece (537 euros, including value-added tax) against an average of 660 euros in the EU.

Cyprus Trading Corporation (CTC) said it had signed an agreement to buy stakes in Greek telecom group OTE’s subsidiaries OTEnet (Cyprus) and OTEnet Telecommunications. CTC will pay 3.99 million euros, the company said in an announcement.

After the transaction, which is subject to approval by Cyprus’s competition commission, CTC will raise its stake from 20 percent to 100 percent in OTEnet (Cyprus) and will control 87.25 percent of OTEnet Telecommunications.