ATHENS, Aug 9 (AFP) - Greek rights activists, who say a surveillance zeppelin flying over Athens as part of security efforts for the Olympics invades people's privacy, on Monday awaited a decision by a judge on whether it will be grounded.
The Democratic Rally rights group last week asked an Athens court for a restraining order to ground the blimp, part of the Athens Olympics organisers' monumental effort to ensure the Games, which begin Friday, are safe.
On Monday, lawyers for Democratic Rally and the Greek government handed their written arguments for and against the blimp to Judge Klonari, who was still studying them late in the afternoon.
After the courthouse closed for the evening, legal sources told an AFP correspondent the judge could announce her decision as late as Wednesday.
Democratic Rally had demanded that the blimp be grounded, alleging that it could be used to eavesdrop on private phone conversations and even record details of people's everyday lives.
"Our sources tell us that the zeppelin registers in detail our private life and can record telephone and private conversations," Stratis Korakas, a former lawmaker for Greece's Communist Party (KKE) and a member of Democratic Rally told AFP on Sunday.
"This can't be acceptable in the name of the Games' security," he told AFP.
Equipped with high-resolution cameras and filled with 6,000 cubic metres (215,000 cubic feet) of helium, the Swiss-built zeppelin has been flying at an altitude of more than 1,200 metres (4,000 feet) over Athens since July 23.
The government has denied that it is being used to listen in on ordinary citizens' conversations.
"The ship transmits only images to the Olympic security command, I repeat, only images," the spokesman of Greece's public order ministry, Lefteris Oikonomou, has said.
Police also defended the zeppelin, saying it could be used to facilitate the "immediate intervention of authorities if persons or property are affected by unlawful acts" and to monitor traffic in Athens' notoriously congested centre.
Footage and pictures provided by the blimp will be stored for seven days and then deleted, police said.
The judge is widely expected to throw out the request, which is a culmination of protests by several rights groups against the tough security measures taken by the Greek authorities to safeguard the Olympics from the threat of global terrorism.
Greece has spent more than two million euros (2.5 million dollars) on hiring and running the Swiss blimp during the Games.
"Such over-expensive toys cannot guarantee security. They're for show only and they put off average citizens in the area where they operate," Mary Bossi, an expert on leftist extremist groups who backed the lawsuit to bring down the blimp, told AFP on Sunday.