Vodafone reports tapping by cops, agencies and spies across the world
07 Jun 2014
Vodafone has published a report detailing how cops, government agencies and spies around the world tapped into its systems and in some cases, directly hooked into phone networks without a warrant.
The dossier contains details relating to 29 countries across which the telco has operations, which include joint-ventures in Australia, Kenya and Fiji.
The document reveals the kind of information agents could intercept, how people were tracked and snooped on in real-time, the steps (if any) that needed to be taken to request the data, and the laws that allowed the government agencies to do so.
The report carrying a Creative Commons licence, is published alongside figures disclosing how many demands for cooperation the telco had received from governments.
This comes only days following The Register revealed Vodafone Cable's involvement in a beyond-top-secret foreign surveillance base run by UK eavesdropping nerve-centre GCHQ.
On Friday, Vodafone's group privacy officer Stephen Deadman called for ending the direct warrantless access to his company's communications systems by governments.
He told The Guardian, the pipes existed and the direct access model existed.
Vodafone's first Law Enforcement Disclosure report, which revealed the report has details on legal frameworks, governance principles, and operating procedures in the 29 countries where the company operated.
A number of those procedures included lawful interception - also known as wiretapping and while most government agencies required legal notices to eavesdrop on customer conversations, others simply had a direct line to users.
"In a small number of countries the law dictates that specific agencies and authorities must have direct access to an operator's network, bypassing any form of operational control over lawful interception on the part of the operator," Vodafone's report said.
Governments of several countries including Albania, Egypt, Hungary, India, South Africa, and Turkey, are not allowed to disclose wiretapping information.
According to The Guardian companies like Vodafone did not know which customers - or how many were spied on.
"After months of detailed analysis, it has become clear that there is, in fact, very little coherence and consistency in law and agency and authority practice," Vodafone said-"even between neighboring EU Member States."
According to the company, individual governments suffered from what the company called "highly divergent views" about the most appropriate response to public demands for greater transparency.
