The Home Ministry has raised concerns about Vodafone and Verizon allegedly collaborating with the UK’s intelligence and security organisation, GCHQ.
“Leading telecom firms, including Vodafone and Verizon, are learnt to be secretly collaborating with UK’s GCHQ and passing on details of their customer’s phone calls, emails and other communication and are known as ‘intercept partners’,” said an internal note written in December sent by Ministry of Home Affairs to the Finance Ministry. Business Line has seen the note. Verizon recently announced a deal to acquire Vodafone’s stake in a US-based joint venture telecom firm. Verizon has separate enterprise services unit in India known as Verizon Data Services.
According to the MHA note, Vodafone has given GCHQ unlimited access to its networks secretly, which can potentially be used to tap into communication traffic from India. The note stated that the concerns were based on information published by various news agencies. While the Cabinet gave its approval to Vodafone’s FDI proposal to increase its stake in the Indian venture to 100 per cent in February despite these concerns, the MHA’s note has now been forwarded to the Department of Telecom for further action.
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