The study comes at a time when other businesses are also calling for a revamp of laws too outdated to stand up to the quickly changing telecommunications universe.
Executives in Silicon Valley, for example, have stepped up pressure on President Barack Obama to curb the U.S. government surveillance programs that collect information off the Internet.
Twitter Inc., LinkedIn Corp., AOL Inc., Google Inc., Apple Inc., Yahoo Inc., Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are pushing for tighter controls over electronic espionage - fearing that eavesdropping threatens the technology industry's financial livelihood.
"They want their customers to be able to trust them to store their data in a private and secure manner," Castro said.
Vodafone's report is also seen by some as an effort to turn the page on the company's embarrassing role in the protests that toppled Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011. As the protests raged, Vodafone bombarded its Egyptian subscribers with pro-government text messages. At the time, the company said it had no choice but to comply, but was severely criticized for its actions. A change in culture followed.
"They took a hard lesson there," said Cynthia Wong, a senior internet researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Even if the government is the ultimate problem, they realized they needed to take steps to mitigate harm to their users."
Civil rights advocates applauded Vodafone for releasing the report, and cracking open the debate, even as they expressed alarm at the infringements into civil rights.
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