Governments From Several Countries Have Direct Access to Tap Calls, Vodafone Says

British telecom company Vodafone has alarming news for those worried about the state of our personal privacy worldwide.

The company, which is the world's second largest phone carrier after China Mobile, has released a privacy report that reveals several governments have direct access to it's communication networks.

Vodafone reported they had received thousands of requests for customer's personal phone data in the past year. While 29 countries had to ask permission to attain the data, at least six countries bypassed the process entirely, having "permanent access to customer communications via their own direct link."

"In a small number of countries, the law dictates that specific agencies and authorities must have direct access to an operator's network, bypassing any form of operational control over lawful interception on the part of the operator," Vodafone said.

The company was unable to name the individual countries specifically because of legal constraints and fear of putting employees and businesses at risk. Albania, Egypt, Hungary, India, Malta, Qatar, Romania, South Africa and Turkey don't allow for any disclosure of its wiretapping or interception practices.

However, the report did link to published national data that shows Britain and Australia putting in numerous requests for phone data. Britain alone put in over 500,000 requests in 2013.

"What we are now discovering is that the picture is even more bleak than previously thought," said the executive director of Privacy International, Gus Hosein, as quoted by The New York Times. "Governments around the world are unashamedly abusing privacy by demanding access to communications and data and, alarmingly, sometimes granting themselves direct access to the networks."

Phone privacy has become an international hotbed issue after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the U.S. and Britain's invasive surveillance practices. Vodafone, which has over 400 million customers in countries throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia — and has recently started operating in some parts of Latin America, like Brazil and Chile — is calling for greater transparency from these governments.

"It is governments -- not communications operators -- who hold the primary duty to provide greater transparency on the number of agency and authority demands issued to operators," the report said. "We believe that regulators, parliaments or governments will always have a far more accurate view of the activities of agencies and authorities than any one operator."