Slashdot Mirror
Vodafone Australia Employee Searched Journalist's Phone Records To Find Source
An anonymous reader writes: In 2011, a journalist named Natalie O'Brien published a series of stories on security problems in Vodafone's Siebel data system. "Customers' home addresses, driver's licenses and credit card details were all available online, O'Brien wrote, and criminal groups were paying for customers' private information." Now, Vodafone Australia has admitted that an employee went through her phone and text records to try and figure out who her sources were within the company. O'Brien wrote, "The invasion of privacy is devastating. It plays with your mind. What was in those texts? Who were they to? What did they see? What did they do with the information?" Despite the admission, Vodafone has denied that it engaged in improper behavior (PDF). The company says it found no evidence the employee was directed to do so by management. That said, leaked emails show management became aware of the privacy breach and its potential repercussions as early as 2012.
There are no such thing as "burner phones" in Australia, you must have 100 points of ID in order to activate a mobile phone service.
It's not data on the phone. It's records of what calls she's made, so that it identifies who she has spoken to. Those have to be stored centrally to generate statistics to identify system problems and to generate billing.
It's the equivalent of an Apache access.log file, but one that can't be turned off because they do the bill runs off the data.
In Australia, legally speaking "digital rape" refers to the use of fingers to sexually penetrate someone without consent. Calling this "digital rape" wouldn't fly in court, since it's a legal term with an established meaning.