The room service

20 April 2023 | Author: Piotr Gadzinowski

The long May weekend is coming soon. However, before you head off on your happy holiday and book a hotel room, just keep your eyes and ears wide open.

Condom wrappers, drug packs, bottles of alcohol and other compromising items. These were the items that Mr Robert K., Security Manager at the Polish Hotel Holding was instructed to look for in the hotel room occupied by Bartosz Kramek of the Open Dialogue Foundation. According to an article by Wojciech Czuchnowski published in Gazeta Wyborcza, the Deputy Minister for Secret Police Services, Maciej Wąsik, was also allegedly involved in illegally investigating and compromising the opposition activist. “We have submitted a complaint to the Public Prosecutor’s Office about the abuse of power and excesses of authority by Messrs Maciej Wąsik and Joachim Brudziński, MP” said Bartosz Kramek.

In his reply, Gheorghe Marian Cristescu, CEO at the Polish Hotel Holding has stated that the news shared by Roberta K. is untrue, and all his actions are a kind of vengeance on the part of a former employee of the holding company, who wanted to extort the money undue to him from his employer.

Perhaps one day we will know the truth in this story. Currently, we are looking forward to the parliamentary meeting of the special services committee, which the opposition is planning to convene on this issue. There will likely be a prosecution and multiple lawsuits on the case.

The Polish Hotel Holding manages a network of more than 50 hotels, including a dozen or so facilities, which operate under globally famous brands, offering more than 6 thousand hotel rooms. The company should regard the brand image and reliability among hotel guests as its top priorities, considering that it is the second largest hotel group in Poland, and the first one in the category: ‘with solely Polish equity’.

Surprisingly, however, the information about wiretapping in PHH hotels has been commonly accepted as true, even among Gazeta Wyborcza’s critics. Perhaps this is because PHH is generally perceived as a company linked to the ruling Law and Justice party. In fact, the Law and Justice is increasingly becoming synonymous with an entity that tracks, eavesdrops and harasses citizens: a so-called “Rubber Ear Co-operative”, though exceptionally malicious. Therefore, in the common view, it is obvious that in a Poland ruled by Law and Justice, you can be videoed in restaurants, hotels and maybe even on the trains of the Polish National Railways when you refuse to eat a donated John Paul’s cream pie. This is precisely the case, because in a state ruled by Law and Justice, secret services are totally beyond control of any other authorities and the taxpayers who maintain them.

As a parliamentarian and journalist, I have spent many nights at hotels all over the world. I have been warned more than once that at a given hotel, the range of conveniences offered to hotel guests, apart from a coffee machine, hotel slippers and a bath tub, may also include eavesdropping and videotaping. Because the necessary equipment is out there and the trained staff too. -/-

The so-called human factor has always been the paramount, but at the same time, it has often turned out to be the most fallible. For instance, in the North Korean capital, the authorities have detected an additional business pursued by their special services. At one hotel just for foreigners, apart from recording any activities hostile to the state authorities, the spec services also videotaped sexual pastimes of the hotel guests. And then sold such videotapes on the black market.

Every hotelier knows that hotel service must be constantly in use, even in the low season, must be constantly in a working order. This is especially true in a Law and Justice state, where “the honest people need not fear” the eavesdropping, though it would be better for them to immediately confess their guilt and agree to cooperate.

Therefore, before you pick up your hotel keys, make sure to check with the hotel reception what kind of eavesdropping service your hotel offers to its guests. Is this a “Law and Justice friendly” facility? Are all room service workers happy with their salaries and do not need to make extra money?

Anyway, just to be on a safe side, pitch a tent, jump in your sleeping bag and turn on the jammers in your hotel room. Otherwise, you may later find your bedtime antics on the web advertised as “National Sex Champion”!

Enjoy your May weekend!

Source: trybuna.info

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