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By Kate Holton and Sarah Young
LONDON, June 6 (Reuters) - The world's second-biggest mobilephone company Vodafone revealed government agencies in sixunidentified countries use its network to listen to and recordcustomers' calls, showing the scale of telecom eavesdroppingaround the world.
The United States and Britain both came in for globalscrutiny and criticism after Edward Snowden, a former contractorwith the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), disclosed theirvast phone, email and internet surveillance operations.
But Vodafone, which has 400 million customers incountries across Europe, Africa and Asia, said in its"Disclosure Report" on Friday that countries in its reach areusing similar practices.
While most governments needed legal notices to tap intocustomers' communications, there were six countries where thatwas not the case, it said.
"In a small number of countries the law dictates thatspecific agencies and authorities must have direct access to anoperator's network, bypassing any form of operational controlover lawful interception on the part of the operator," Vodafonesaid.
Vodafone did not name the six for legal reasons. It addedthat in Albania, Egypt, Hungary, India, Malta, Qatar, Romania,South Africa and Turkey it could not disclose any informationrelated to wiretapping or interception.
The Vodafone report, which is incomplete because manygovernments will not allow it to disclose requests, also linkedto already-published national data which showed Britain andAustralia making hundreds of thousands of requests.
It showed that of the countries in which it operates, EUmember Italy made the most requests for communication data.
Germany, which expressed outrage when it was revealed lastyear that U.S. intelligence services had listened into the callsof Angela Merkel, also made requests to listen in toconversations and collect the data around them, such as wherethe calls were made and how long they lasted.
Vodafone received no requests from the government of theUnited States because it does not have an operating licencethere. It exited a joint mobile venture with Verizon last year.
The extent of U.S. and British surveillance was laid barewhen the NSA's Snowden passed stolen secret documents tonewspapers, triggering a spy scandal that caused a standoffbetween U.S. President Barack Obama and the Kremlin and led tocalls for greater scrutiny of Western agents.
ACCESS AT THE FLICK OF A SWITCH
In the cases of the six countries, the company saidgovernment agencies had inserted their own equipment into theVodafone network, or diverted Vodafone's data traffic throughgovernment systems, to enable them to listen into calls, anddetermine where they were made.
"For governments to access phone calls at the flick of aswitch is unprecedented and terrifying," said Shami Chakrabarti,Director of human rights group Liberty.
"Snowden revealed the internet was already treated as fairgame. Bluster that all is well is wearing pretty thin - ouranalogue laws need a digital overhaul."
Western security services say they are fighting a silent warwith extremists who are trying to kill their citizens and thehead of Britain's MI5 Security Service has said Snowden'srevelations were a gift to terrorists.
Vodafone runs mobile and some broadband operations in 27countries and works with partners in 49 more. It also has asmall number of local operator businesses in other countriesthrough its acquisition of the Cable & Wireless worldwidebusiness.
It said it had received requests in 29 countries.
Vodafone linked to data released by national governments,covering either 2013 or the most recent year available. It notedthat each country, agency and operator counts requests indifferent ways and therefore it was difficult to compare them.
According to the most recent national reports, which werecollated by the Guardian newspaper, Australia made 685,757requests for details about calls, such as where they were madeand to whom. It intercepted 3,389 calls.
Britain had similar statistics, with 514,608 requests fordetails and 2,760 interceptions. Germany made 18,026 requests,with 23,687 interceptions in 2012, the last time data was given.
Vodafone is the world's second largest mobile operator interms of customer numbers, behind China Mobile. (Editing by Sophie Walker)
