In a move that is likely to be an amalgam of both respite and concern to the
operators, the government has decided to take command of all phone tapping
activities. The authorities are working on a Rs 800 crore project to design a
centralized monitoring system that will be executed with the help of CDOT.
Faced by threats of terrorists attacks, the government has realized that
fool-proof confidentiality is needed to gather information for national
security. This initiative will provide the much-needed centralized surveillance
set-up instead of a multi-channel system, vulnerable to intrusion and leakages.
DoT has already initiated discussions with the operators and CDOT as to how
to proceed further. In the existing system, where the individual operator
managed and activated the phone tapping set-up after authorized warrants were
issued by the law enforcement agencies made the process all the more time-taking
and complex. With about 260 mobile licenses (twelve to thirteen in each of the
twenty-two telecom circles), about twenty operational ILD operators and over 100
ISPs, this decentralization made the system more sensitive to infiltration.
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Defeated by the terrorists at the technology front, the DoT had been
frantically pushing for installation of a network for monitoring cellular
phones. In 2007, eight cellular companies based in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai,
and Kolkata had spent Rs 1.7 crore each for importing the monitoring equipment.
The urgency of getting the system in place reflects from the fact that even
before it could become operative, the DoT issued orders for the network to be
extended to all states, which was a mammoth task for the private operators.
Industry veteran, Satya N Gupta, chief regulatory advisor, BT says till some
years back there were six agencies which were to get a windfall of thirty lines
from each operator in each city, but with security situations changing, the
number of these agencies has gone up to nine. It is thus better to minimize the
number of channels.
All the operators had complied to DoT's direction and installed the
monitoring set-up as the authority had threatened to cancel license of the
defaulters. Back in 2007, COAI had alleged that agencies followed unauthorized
ways to ask for phone taps. Operators complained that there were hardly any case
where the agencies left a written authorization. They got orders for phone
tapping verbally, and at times given by junior officials. They sought refuge in
Supreme Court's 1996 ruling which described phone tapping as 'technological
eavesdropping' and a 'serious invasion of privacy.'
There existed another crucial dispute. As end-users, the agencies were
required to foot the bill for leasing the digital 2 Mbps from MTNL, which was to
connect receivers and recording equipments in their offices to the switchboard
in cellular companies. The cost of the annual lease was then estimated to be
around Rs 15 lakh for a 50 km radius, which is what each agency will have to
spend in each city, which was not acceptable to the operators.
According to Gupta, a medium-size operator will have to spend roughly Rs 8-10
crore on installing the equipment today and with time there will some
upgradatation cost, which till now the operators have been bearing. The DoT has
just begun talks with service providers. It is yet to be decided how the entire
thing will be done. “The existing players already have monitoring equipments in
place, the new players might get some government assistance,” he says.
Most of the operators refuse to comment on the concerns of privacy of their
subscribers, but hope that the new arrangement will make the country better
equipped to handle situations like 26/11 attack.
“The picture is not very clear at the moment as there has been only one
meeting between the authorities and operators, but we are confident this
facility will smoothen the monitoring process,” says Rajat Mukherjee, chief
corporate affairs officer, Idea Cellular.
The challenges ahead of the new system are plenty. There are issues of
standardization, new technologies like VoIP, etc. A pilot project will first be
launched in Delhi, beginning with all mobile and landline traffic, and gradually
be extended to international long distance and data traffic. Until the entire
project becomes fully functional, all telecom companies will be required to
operate their lawful intercept monitoring facilities. Eventually, some of these
individual systems will be morphed into the central facility or become redundant
over time.
What is pertinent at this point that the management of the new facility has
to be guarded by the safest hands. There have been media reports making
revelations that the US' National Security Agency's (NSA) intercept operators
spent their time eavesdropping on saucy conversations between Americans abroad
and their wives or girl friends, rather than monitoring potential terrorists
interaction.
The operators must express their concerns to the authority at the initial
stages so that the initiative does not turn out to be a frivolous means of
settling political scores at the cost of national security.
Heena Jhingan
heenaj@cybermedia.co.in
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