Helsingin Sanomat reported on Friday that the corporate security unit of the telecommunications service provider Sonera has dug up the telephone records of individual people for its own investigations on a number of occasions between autumn 2000 and spring 2001.

   

According to information revealed to Helsingin Sanomat, the Sonera security unit has searched through people's telephone records which reveal information such as the telephone numbers that the people in question have called, the time the calls were made, and their duration.

   

Helsingin Sanomat has also learned from its sources that some of those whose telephone records were investigated were not even Sonera employees.

   

The purpose of the secret operation was to determine who had revealed confidential information concerning disputes within Sonera's top management to Helsingin Sanomat.

The internal investigation

on the leaked information came soon after Helsingin Sanomat printed a story on October 19 2000 on the removal of Harri Vatanen from his post as managing director of the Sonera subsidiary SmartTrust.

   

The article quoted anonymous sources within the company, who explained the background of the events and spoke about conflicts within the company's management. The article angered the Sonera management, even though no actual business secrets were revealed.

   

The company's security unit began its investigation of individual phone records within a week of the publication of the article. Sonera was able to get the phone records from its own systems; this was fairly easy, as many of the calls were made from mobile telephones with a Sonera subscription.

   

One of the aims of the investigation was to see who had placed calls to Helsingin Sanomat during a certain period of time.

The Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA)

on Friday asked Sonera for a clarification of the claims made by Helsingin Sanomat. Timo Lehtimäki, head of the information security unit of FICORA, said that the authority will ask for a police investigation if any evidence is found to back up the newspaper story.

   

Lehtimäki pointed out that the law places very tight restrictions on the activities of telecommunications operators, because they have much easier access to confidential information than ordinary citizens.

   

Finnish law restricts access to this kind of information to police or other officials, and even they usually need a court order for the purpose.

Sonera has refused requests

by Helsingin Sanomat for an interview on the matter.

   

On Friday Jari Jaakkola, the company's head of communications, issued a statement according to which Sonera has no evidence to back up claims that the company would have used the telephone records of private individuals for its own purposes.

   

"Helsingin Sanomat first got in touch with Sonera on this issue in May. Because the allegations were serious, Sonera immediately launched an internal investigation which was conducted by an outside party. The result of the investigation was that there was no evidence to support the claims made by Helsingin Sanomat today", Jaakkola said, adding that Sonera is considering possible legal action against Helsingin Sanomat.

Helsingin Sanomat Editor-in-Chief

Janne Virkkunen said that the threat of legal action did not come as a surprise.

   

According to Virkkunen, the item published in Friday's newspaper was the result of long and meticulous work.