Vodafone reveals existence of secret wires that allow state surveillance

Wires allow agencies to listen to or record live conversations, in what privacy campaigners are calling a 'nightmare scenario'

Juliette Garside
The Guardian, Thursday 5 June 2014

Vodafone, one of the world's largest mobile phone groups, has revealed the existence of secret wires that allow government agencies to listen to all conversations on its networks, saying they are widely used in some of the 29 countries in which it operates in Europe and beyond.

The company has broken its silence on government surveillance in order to push back against the increasingly widespread use of phone and broadband networks to spy on citizens, and will publish its first Law Enforcement Disclosure Report on Friday. At 40,000 words, it is the most comprehensive survey yet of how governments monitor the conversations and whereabouts of their people.