The world’s second-biggest mobile phone company Vodafone revealed in a privacy report information that governments -including in Greece – regularly requested data about the company’s users for law enforcement and national security purposes.
It showed that Italy, one of the countries in which Vodafone operates, made the most requests for communication data, while in Greece there had been over 8,000 requests in 2013 made by the authorities.
It wasn’t revealed what kind of information the government was seeking, who was being spied on, or if Vodafone granted access to the users information and phone call records.
According to the report published in the British newspaper The Guardian, governments of different countries have direct access to customers’ data, a fact that has become hotly debated since the revelations by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, about the spying activities by American and British intelligence agencies.
“For governments to access phone calls at the flick of a switch is unprecedented and terrifying,” said the Liberty Director, Shami Chakrabarti. “Snowden revealed the Internet was already treated as fair game. Bluster that all is well is wearing pretty thin, our analogue laws need a digital overhaul.”
Vodafone runs mobile and some broadband operations in 27 countries and works with partners in 49 more.
In the report the company stated that it had received thousands of requests from 29 countries in the 12 months through March 31. But the report also said that governments in certain countries had direct access to its networks without having to use legal warrants, compared to Albania, Egypt, Hungary, India, Malta, Qatar, Romania, South Africa and Turkey, where the disclosure of any information related to wiretapping or interception is illegal.
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