Indian mobile operators are moving fast on LBS (location based services) which was not the case a couple of months ago. Large operators like Reliance, Tata, Vodafone, Idea, and Videocon have already floated RFP and are in a hurry to meet the deadline set by the Ministry of Communications & IT. Some operators are still in the process of preparing the RFP whereas others are still waiting to see how things unfold before taking the leap.
So, if things go as per plan we will see pan India rollout of LBS within 4-6 months time. This would be of great help to law enforcement agencies as it will help in location positioning of terrorists' mobile phones in the country and help catch them before they can engage in any terror activity.
On the other hand, we are also seeing a number of state governments coming out with RFP on lawful interception.
I believe this is a waste of government fund and also manpower resources of our intelligence agencies. It seems the state governments are duplicating facilities for monitoring voice, e-mail, internet, data, chat, etc. The government of Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, and Haryana have already floated RFP for LIMS (lawful interception & monitoring system) and are presently doing technical evaluation.
To get the desired result, the best approach should be that the central government comes up with a standard RFP for LIMS, which is followed by all state governments. The state governments need to just specify the capacity of the network depending upon the traffic requirement and float the RFP. All this will help in better coordination between state and central governments as they will have one common standard LIMS platform and even the data will be uniform. It would be easier for law enforcing agencies to analyze that data and come up with conclusive reports with respect to targets.
The other model can be a centralized one where all data comes to a common server from all service providers be it 2G/3G/4G and internet service providers. And a pipe is given to all security agencies so they can do their own analysis and also come up with a common analysis depending upon the complexity of the target. This model is comparatively cheaper and would be more effective vis-a-vis a state wide model as it would be a centralized resource and one can do online analysis of the target. This will also help in online monitoring of calls, chats and e-mails of the targets.
Once LBS is clubbed with a centralized LIMS or decentralized LIMS, even our intelligence would be far more superior or at par with developing economies. By listening to voice calls and analyzing data feed, law enforcement agencies can come close to the target as we are looking at accuracy levels of 50 to 500 meters depending upon the geography. But for that to happen the ministry needs to come up with a data capturing format and also how it needs to be delivered so that agencies can slice and dice the data as per their convenience. It seems nobody has a clue about who will make that format. Some say it will be DoT and others say it would be C-DOT as they are focusing on LIMS specification. I think the focus should be on how early DoT manages to finalize it and pass it on to operators so that they can meet their deadline and LBS can start functioning in the country in combination with LIMS.
Pravin Prashant
pravinp@cybermedia.co.in
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