Vodafone feels Edward Snowden effect with surveillance revelations

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/06/analysis-vodafone-feels-edward-snowden-effects

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What has been achieved since the first of the Edward Snowden revelations appeared in the Guardian a year ago? Quite a lot. Proposed legislative changes in the US, judicial challenges worldwide and increased public awareness of the scope of surveillance.

One of the biggest changes has come from the corporate world. The initial response of the internet and telecom companies last summer was to deny, play down or claim ignorance of their role in co-operating with the US and British surveillance agencies, the NSA and GCHQ.

Since then, faced with a worldwide consumer backlash that analysts predict could cost them tens of billions of pounds, those companies have become more outspoken, distancing themselves from government and calling for more transparency and reform.

Vodafone has joined the throng with the publication of a "Law Enforcement Disclosure Report", an attempt to collate the number of warrant applications to intercept communications in the 29 countries where it operates. The company insists it is not doing so because of a consumer backlash and that it is not suffering commercially, even in Germany, where feelings run highest in Europe. It points out its discussions with the lobbying group Privacy International about transparency predate the spy disclosures in the Guardian.

But the Snowden disclosures have accelerated that process. Vodafone began work on its report last autumn, well aware that it could be punished commercially if it loses customer trust. Whatever its motives, Vodafone's survey and outspoken comments about the balance between surveillance and privacy are to be welcomed. In its introduction to its report, Vodafone draws attention to the fact that most of the legislation on privacy and surveillance predates the internet and needs to be updated.

Vodafone's survey also shows just how meaningless is much of the data on warrants provided by many governments. Different countries have different methods of collating figures, making comparisons impossible. Some totals include repeat warrants or the same warrant issued to a dozen different companies. Some countries shamefully refused to allow Vodafone to publish any data at all.

The hope is that publication may prompt debate in those countries that will shame the governments into disclosure and might lead to a common method of collating figures.

Much of the focus of the Snowden revelations has been on the internet giants because Google, Facebook, Apple and others were named in the Prism slides, published by the Guardian on 6 June last year. The documents show the level of collaboration between the telecom companies and the surveillance agencies. The telecom companies only received less media attention because they were hidden for the most part behind hard-to-discover code-names, one indication of how pivotal they are to the spy agencies.

Transparency on the part of Vodafone only goes so far. It has not yet clarified or even confirmed its participation in Tempora, GCHQ's tapping of the network of cables which carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic.

Vodafone's position is that only a handful of its employees would know about the programme and even if they did, they would not legally be allowed to talk about it. Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, describes Vodafone's survey as "commendable" but says that "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".

Snowden is stuck in Moscow, on the run from the US. But at least he has the satisfaction of having started the worldwide debate he wanted on surveillance. Without him, it is hard to believe that one of the world's biggest telecom companies would be publishing details about warrant requests, calling for increased transparency and urging legislative reform to bring surveillance into line with the internet age.