Vodafone: governments use secret cables to tap phones
Vodafone: governments use secret cables to tap phones
Government agencies are able to listen to phone
conversations live and even track the location of citizens without warrants
using secret cables connected directly to network equipment, admits Vodafone
today
By Matthew Sparkes, Deputy Head of Technology 10:20AM BST
06 Jun 2014
Government agencies are able to listen to phone
conversations live and even track the location of citizens without warrants
using secret cables connected directly to network equipment, admits Vodafone
today.
The company said that secret wires have been connected to
its network and those belonging to competitors, giving government agencies the
ability to tap in to phone and broadband traffic. In many countries this is
mandatory for all telecoms companies, it said.
Vodafone is today publishing its first Law Enforcement
Disclosure Report which will describe exactly how the governments it deals with
are eavesdropping on citizens. It is calling for an end to the use of “direct
access” eavesdropping and transparency on the number of warrants issued giving
access to private data.
The company said that the 29 countries it operates in
have different laws that demand that they restrict or block certain access to
customers, or allow governments to directly access information about them.
Refusal to comply with those laws was “not an option”, it said, as those
countries could then stop them from operating within its borders.
In some countries this means giving access to the content
of phone calls and other electronic communications, or access to metadata such
as the number of calls made, the numbers they were made to and the location of
the caller when those calls were placed. In some countries, around six that
Vodafone does business with but not including the UK, they are made to provide
a "direct access" cable straight into their network to allow
governments to siphon off any data they wish, without having to issue a
warrant.
Vodafone's group privacy officer, Stephen Deadman, told
the Guardian: "These pipes exist, the direct access model exists.
"We are making a call to end direct access as a
means of government agencies obtaining people's communication data. Without an
official warrant, there is no external visibility.
If we receive a demand we can push back against the
agency. The fact that a government has to issue a piece of paper is an
important constraint on how powers are used.
"We need to debate how we are balancing the needs of
law enforcement with the fundamental rights and freedoms of the citizens. The
ideal is we get a much more informed debate going, and we do all of that
without putting our colleagues in danger."
In the UK it is thought that a "direct access"
pipe would be illegal, as warrants must be issued prior to collecting any data.
But various legislation can grant warrants to intercept data in the interests
of national security, to prevent or detect crime or disorder, in the interests
of the "economic wellbeing" of the UK, to protect public safety or to
protect public health.
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, often
called a "snoopers' charter", gives various bodies a mandate to
request this data, including the Charity Commission, local councils, the Postal
Services Commission and the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust.
Vodafone's report reveals that the UK government was
granted 2,760 warrants to tap communications content - listeing to actuall call
content - and 514,608 warrants to intercept communications metadata.
Some of the countries in which Vodafone operates, such as
Egypt, India, Qatar, Romania, South Africa and Turkey make it illegal to
disclose any information about how interception is carried out, or how often.
Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International,
said: "While governments have starved this debate over surveillance by
saying nothing and denying everything, some companies have acted more
responsibly by bringing data to the table. Vodafone is taking a commendable
step by taking this issue on at an international scale. And they are trying to
identify the legal basis for governments' claimed powers. What we are now
discovering is that the picture is even more bleak than previously thought.
Governments around the world are unashamedly abusing privacy by demanding
access to communications and data, and alarmingly, sometimes granting
themselves direct access to the networks.
“Now that Vodafone has been more open, the entire
industry has cover to take the necessary next step of pushing back. Pushing
back against bad requests is a start, pushing back against bad laws is the next
step. It should start at home, as the UK continues to be a black mark on the
global map of mass surveillance with GCHQ's tapping directly into Vodafone's
cables that carry our communications across the world.
“The usefulness of transparency reports hinges on
governments abiding by the rule of law. We now know that these reports only
provide a limited picture of what is going on.”
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