Invoices seen by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism suggest Rayzone, a corporate spy agency that provides its government clients with “geolocation tools”, used an intermediary in 2018 to lease an access point into the telecoms network via Sure Guernsey, a mobile operator in the Channel Islands.

Such access points, known in the telecoms industry as “global titles”, provide a route into a decades-old global messaging system known as SS7, which allows mobile operators to connect users around the world. It is not uncommon for mobile companies to lease out such access.