Vodafone's admission that an employee accessed O'Brien's mobile phone record comes on the back a report published in The Australian on Saturday that detailed a leaked email written by Vodafone Group's then head of fraud Colin Yates. Former Fairfax journalist Natalie O'Brien. Credit:Anthony Johnson In an email written in 2012, Mr Yates said he had "no reason to believe" the allegations O'Brien's phone records were accessed were not correct and there was a "huge risk" to Vodafone if the information "gets into the public domain". "If the issue relating to breaching the reporter's privacy by searching her private call records and text messages gets into the public domain, this could have serious consequences given it is a breach of the Australian Telecommunications Act," the email said. "And [it] would certainly destroy all the work done by VHA over the past months to try and restore their reputation."

In a statement on Saturday afternoon, Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) denied any allegations of improper behaviour. The statement goes on to say that in June 2012, VHA became aware that an employee had accessed O'Brien's records. "VHA immediately commissioned an investigation by one of Australia's top accounting firms. The investigation found there was no evidence VHA management had instructed the employee to access the messages and that VHA management were fully aware of their legal obligations in relation to customer information," the statement said. A company investigation into privacy breaches following O'Brien's story was undertaken, the statement said, to "determine if any VHA staff had breached privacy laws or engaged in any criminal behaviour, not to discover the source of damaging media stories". O'Brien was aware her phone records had been accessed prior to The Australian's report and said she was "absolutely outraged". NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Stephen Blanks called on the government to investigate the incident as a matter of priority.

"What's extraordinary is that the regulatory system is inefficient to find out about this blatant breach of law and one has to bear in mind that Vodafone's business is entirely dependent on a government license," Mr Blanks said. "It's very disturbing that one telecommunications carrier thinks nothing of breaching the privacy of its customers in order to find out information of commercial advantage to it." Australian Communications and Media Authority and Office of the Information Commissioner spokespeople said they did not have any comments to make on the allegations. Aside from revealing allegations that O'Brien's phone records were illegally accessed, Yates' leaked email suggested the telco had hidden the full extent of the security breach revealed by O'Brien's article, allegedly telling authorities that it was instead a "one-off incident". "As you know this is in fact not the case and VHA has been suffering these breaches since Siebel [the telco's data system] went live and did nothing or very little to close off the weaknesses that allowed them to occur," the email written by Mr Yates said.

According to the report, Mr Yates wrote that Vodafone was "forced to act by the news story becoming public". The VHA spokesperson denied that any any incorrect statements were made to the Privacy Commissioner or any other authorities about the security breach.