OFF THE CUFF: Martinelli spies tracked love lives –

Technology is advancing at a dizzying rate, and a year is enough for a device to become obsolescent, while the  market for present day Matta Hari’s is shrinking.

Under this premise, the government of Ricardo Martinelli purchased new computer spy equipment a few months before the last election reports La Prensa.
It had less versatility than the first device. However, it fit precisely one goal: cell phones.
The artifact was just a little bigger than a laptop, so it could be moved without difficulty.
According to the source, with the new equipment , Martinelli’s government strengthened its capacity to violate the fundamental rights of Panamanians, as it enabled the finding of the physical the location of a phone and to keep a monitoring program to identify the places to which the cellular was moved.
Equipment operators could track the daily journey of a person and who he who met because the apparatus also recognized phones near the target.
The powerful apparatus also enabled operators to seize the cell operating system and access all the conversations and all the files on the phone and also tap surrounding conversations.
ROMANTIC ESPIONAGE
 This capability enabled, the source said, a network of ‘romantic’ espionage, in which operators would know the love life of opposition and government figures.
The cost of equipment is unknown, since the only evidence of its existence are several hundred pages of transcripts of conversations there are no documents that support its purchase, and no one knows its current whereabouts.
These documents specify the victims of the network included businessmen and even US diplomats in Panama.
The former US ambassador to Panama, Barabara Stephenson, sent a message to Wahington  in which she revealed that in August 2009 Martinelli had requested assistance for this purpose.
 “I need help wiretapping” was the message of the former president.Olmedo Alfaro, Martinelli security chief at the time and who was the director of the Security Council at the time of the acquisition of the first spy equipment, entrusted to an agent of the DEA (US drug Enforcenent Agency) the intentions of the president : “Alfaro said he had orders from the President to find out who was sleeping with his wife ” Stephenson cabled Washington.
Article 167 of the Penal Code prohibits this type of activity: “Whoever, without the authorization of the judicial authority to intercept telecommunications or uses technical devices for listening, transmitting, recording or reproducing conversations not addressed to the public shall be punished by two to four years in prison.”
The apparatus may still be active, because without knowing the manufacturer, an application for deactivation cannot be made.
For its size, it could be in any case, and you could be a target
MATTA HARI was a Dutch exotic dancer, convicted in France in WW I of spying for Germany. She was executed by a French firing squad in 1917..