Deutsche Telekom, the German phones giant, upgraded Friday its internal inquiry into a snooping scandal, appointing a former senior judge with his own staff to question personnel and recommend new privacy guidelines, according to dpa. Speaking a day after prosecutors searched the company's Bonn head office, chief executive Rene Obermann said Telekom was engaging Gerhard Schaefer, an expert on privacy law and former federal high court justice, to lead the internal inquiry. The German government demanded Friday that the various telecommunications companies introduce self-regulation to prevent any repeats of the 2005 privacy breach at the country's biggest phone company. A government meeting in Berlin on Monday with the companies' chiefs will initiate a dialogue about how the industry can improve compliance with privacy laws, an Interior Ministry spokeswoman said. Telekom says its internal-security department used billing records of hundreds of thousands of calls to trace the source of leaks. Prosecutors were told two weeks ago and are investigating eight persons on suspicion of breaching the privacy of phone calls. The monthly magazine Capital said its reporter Reinhard Kowalewsky was the journalist targeted. News media reports said the Telekom security team traced Kowalewsky's scoops to a labour leader on the Telekom board who was then confronted by Telekom over the leaks, but denied the claim. Telekom chief executive Obermann, who oversaw a purge of the internal-security department, said Schaefer would review the original internal inquiry into "wrongful access to telephone connections data" that led Telekom to call in prosecutors. Schaefer told reporters he would appoint his own staff and recommend to Telekom how it could prevent any relapses. Earlier Friday, Obermann rejected suggestions that the snoopers may also have obtained confidential banking data as they tried to plug high-level leaks to the media under a previous chief executive, Kai-Uwe Ricke. The senior prosecutor, Fred Apostel, confirmed in Bonn that his team was studying a claim "by the chief executive of a small company" that the snoopers also used bank data to detect who was giving tip- offs to Kowalewsky. Apostel said he knew of no documents that corroborated this. The revelations have triggered a media outcry in Germany and revived debate about whether phone companies should even keep records of calls. New German legislation requires the records to be kept in case they need to be seized by court order for crime inquiries. Telekom, which operates T-Mobile wireless networks in several nations, said earlier there was no evidence that calls were tapped.
