How safe and private is your cellphone call record?

Not just calls made, Jaitley claimed to have used CDRs to trace Saxena’s movements from Lodhi Estate to Ferozeshah Road on July 22, the day the UPA government won the trust vote in Parliament. While details of the last 10 or 20 incoming and outgoing calls can be obtained from a mobile set, location details can be got only from the service operator.

The licence agreement cellphone service providers have with the government clearly prohibits disclosing call records of a subscriber to any third party.

When contacted, Jaitley refused to say where he got the call records from. “You reporters never reveal your sources. Why am I supposed to tell you where I got the details from?” he asked. When told that what the BJP had done was in violation of law, he said, “I have no comments to make on that”.

So how did Saxena’s CDRs reach the BJP?

Vodafone Essar, the cellphone service provider of Saxena and over 50 million customers, says it did not share Saxena’s CDRs with a third party. “We are thoroughly investigating this matter,” said a company spokesperson adding that an “internal inquiry” was on to find out whether any “unauthorised access” occurred at its end.

Sources in the company said a team from its UK office was also flown in to determine if processes in place could be bypassed to get such information.

“As per law, we are required to share such information only with designated officers from Government agencies, usually law-enforcement and security agencies after a formal written request from them,” said the spokesperson.

In Delhi, for example, a request for obtaining call detail records (CDRs) has to be made by a designated Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP).

This evening, when a reporter of The Indian Express called up Vodafone Essar seeking call details of the last 30 days on his personal phone, a customer executive said the company does not provide incoming call details to the subscriber himself or even outgoing call details if these are outside the monthly billing cycle.

Court orders are another way to secure phone records of a subscriber, but for this to happen, one needs to satisfy the court about the legality, bonafide and necessity of the request in this regard.

The matter becomes much more serious in case of phone-tapping in which case a written approval of Home Secretary of the state is necessary. Vodafone sources said that access to CDRs within the company, too, is limited to very few “senior and relevant” officials given its “sensitive nature.”