Telco Giant Vodafone Looked At Journalist's Phone Records To See Who Was Leaking Info To Her

from the that's-illegal dept

Down in Australia, it appears that phone giant Vodafone is facing a bit of a scandal as it's come out that the company went digging into a journalist's phone records after she wrote some stories about security flaws in a Vodafone system. Remember, a decade ago, when there was a big scandal at HP, when it spied on board members to try to stop leaks? That was bad. This is worse. This is directly violating a customers' privacy, just because you're upset about some leaks.
In a 2012 email from then ­Vodafone Hutchison Australia head of fraud Colin Yates to then Vodafone global corporate secu­rity director Richard Knowlton, Mr Yates warns of the “huge risk” to the company if a string of allegations — which he “has no reason to believe” are not factual — “gets into the public domain”.

Of particular concern to Mr Yates was the hacking of the “call charge records and text messages” from the mobile of Fairfax investigative reporter Natalie O’Brien, then a Vodafone customer.

On January 10, 2011, the day after O’Brien broke a story about major security flaws with Vodafone’s Siebel data system — ­including that private call records could be illegally accessed — ­Vodafone investigators had discussions about searching her phone records to find the Vodafone sources for the story.
You can see the story by O'Brien here, in which she revealed that people could access Vodafone customer information, because a source she was talking to had the password to the company's database. This resulted in an investigation by Australia's Privacy Commissioner into Vodafone's security practices. Meanwhile, Vodafone tried to play the whole thing down as a "one-off incident" of someone abusing the password to the system.

Meanwhile, in the background, they were abusing their own systems to try to figure out who was talking to O'Brien -- and were admitting internally that they were misrepresenting the real situation publicly:
Following her story, Vodafone executives allegedly “told the press, the NSW Privacy Commissioner and other high-profile Australian agencies that the breach was a one-off incident”.

Mr Yates wrote to Mr Knowlton: “As you know this is in fact not the case and VHA has been suffering these breaches since Siebel went live and did nothing or very little to close off the weaknesses that allowed them to occur.”
Investigating a privacy breach by breaching the privacy of the reporter who exposed it is... perhaps not the proper response.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: australia, journalism, leaks, natalie o'brien, privacy, security, sources, spying
Companies: vodafone


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • icon
    Sheogorath (profile), 14 Sep 2015 @ 7:05am

    Investigating a privacy breach by breaching the privacy of the reporter who exposed it is... perhaps not the proper response.
    Oh, it's absolutely the proper response if you're trying to scare people out of whistleblowing and reporting on the issues thus uncovered. Whether or not it's the moral response, Vodafone clearly just doesn't care. :(

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 7:32am

    Lesson learned, maybe

    Next time, use a competitor's service to leak info/receive leaks.
    Not that Vodafone should do this or be in the clear for it, but that's the first thing I take away from this story.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 8:50am

      Re: Lesson learned, maybe

      Sorry, lesson NOT learned.

      The best leaks are done by "sneaker net".

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 8:13am

    i dont ever see these and other abuses like it stopping anytime soon, unless someone with the iq of the planet, figures out a solution to everybodies reasonable need

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 8:30am

      Re:

      Hey guys, you know way back when when i mentioned, a person having the equivalent iq of the planet, yeah, well, i kinda feel like, i may have given, the impression you see, of an informal consent there, to skynet..

      let me clarify

      I have'nt.

      P.S.
      Close one

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 11:40am

      Re:

      Vodafone HAS no reasonable need to basically go hunting through all its customers records for juicy info and gossip.

      Taking bets this is ANOTHER Newscorpse type scandal where normal phone 'advisors' regularly go through celebrities phone records for shits n giggles.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 8:57am

    "from the that's-illegal dept"

    Illegal under what law? (Sorry if the story mentions it; I can't access The Australian's site.) Usually companies have some fine print that allows them to access records to protect their own interests. It sounds like the same thing Microsoft did a while ago, and has never been prosecuted for (though Australia probably has better privacy laws than the USA).

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 5:00pm

      Re: "from the that's-illegal dept"

      If you read Microsoft's new privacy agreement,it still allows them to do it again. They simply need to follow procedure (get a lawyer involved).

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Quinton Reeves, 14 Sep 2015 @ 8:26pm

      Re: "from the that's-illegal dept"

      Yeah, Australia does have better Fair Trading and Privacy legislation. Also can't revoke any of those rights in a contract.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Roger Strong (profile), 14 Sep 2015 @ 9:54am

    HP did more than spy on its board members; they too spied on reporters. They had their private investigators follow and examine the phone records of nine journalists who covered the company, as well as the records of some of their relatives.

    It wasn't just about spying. It was about putting pressure on reporters to avoid bad press. As Groklaw put it:

    For the journalists that we know were followed and pretexted, detectives and maybe others got lists of who called them on the phone and who they called and when and where. Will folks want to call them now? Will they pick up the phone if they see on Caller ID it is one of those reporters? If you were telling a journalist something that your company would prefer you not tell, would you now?
    [...]
    Not only that, but some media entities have certain regulations about what a reporter can cover. At CNET, for example, none of the three can now cover HP. So is there damage to those journalists' careers? Obviously that will be the argument made in court to demonstrate actual damages. If you are a tech reporter, and now you can't cover a major tech company, are you damaged? Worse, might a cynical corporation wishing to get a good journalist off a story deliberately tail them so as to get the journalist banned from covering them from that point on?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 1:56pm

    Privacy, Piracy, what's the difference?

    Everything else is upside down down there...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 5:25pm

    How American of them, let's not fix the problem, let's just find someone to blame for it, as it surely isn't our fault.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 15 Sep 2015 @ 7:33pm

    Vodafone Go, Go, Go... to hell.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.