UK Vodafone says governments listen in

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BBC News - Vodafone reveals direct government wiretaps

Vodafone has said that a small number of governments have direct access to communications flowing over its networks.

Most countries Vodafone operates in need a warrant to intercept communications, the firm said.

However, in some countries police have a direct link to customer's phone calls and web communications.

Orwell, as one poster suggests, was a friggin optimist.
Governments with free, totally unrestricted access to listen in in on your calls and, to make it worse, the phone companies aren't allowed to say which governments.

I find this disturbing.

 

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Vodafone ran surveillance in a number of countries...

Vodafone report sparks global surveillance debate
Jun 7,`14 -- Telecommunications company Vodafone's report on government surveillance of its customers in 29 countries reveals more than first meets the eye - and is raising questions from Dublin to Delhi about how much spying on email and telephone chats happens in secret.

In Friday's report Vodafone said most countries required the company's knowledge and cooperation to hear phone calls or see emails, but at least six governments have given their security agencies the power of direct access. Vodafone didn't identify the countries that have tapped into its network, but the report provided some clues. An 88-page appendix reveals that five countries - Albania, Egypt, Hungary, Ireland and Qatar - have provisions that allow authorities to demand unfettered access. In vague language, the report also indicated similar powers could exist in India and the United Kingdom, too.

In too many cases, Vodafone said, governments kept both the company and wider society in the dark about what was happening, with laws explicitly forbidding government disclosure of any details of its electronic eavesdropping. Ireland, a European hub for many social media and communications companies, refused to tell Vodafone anything about how its national police accessed its wireless and internet services. The Irish situation is muddied further by the fact that its laws on the subject date to 1983 and 1993, when mobile and email communication were still in their infancy.

The Irish government defends the need for electronic surveillance to combat Irish Republican Army factions and Ireland's criminal underworld. But Ireland's civil liberties watchdog accused the government of legal laziness over the past two decades of telecommunications innovation. "Our interception laws were drafted in a pre-digital age and are plainly no longer fit for purpose," said Mark Kelly, director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. Kelly said he has asked the government to confirm whether it operates "direct access pipes into the networks of telecoms operators."

Other European countries are far more open. In Germany, for example, the government publishes annual statistics. In 2012, the most recent year of disclosure, Germany said it made 18,026 requests to phone companies to hear 23,687 calls. Wiretapping of phones and accessing of call records for law-enforcement purposes is a decades-old and accepted practice even in the most open democracies. With backing from courts, police can request cooperation from phone companies to access communications. But in developing countries such as Congo, Ghana and Lesotho, Vodafone said it cannot support wiretapping, because governments haven't requested the technology.

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Nasty