How They Tap Your Mobile

IT takes five minutes to fix a bundle of copper and plastic no bigger than a rupee coin to a land telephone. Tune a receiver 8212; or a sim...

IT takes five minutes to fix a bundle of copper and plastic no bigger than a rupee coin to a land telephone. Tune a receiver 8212; or a simple FM radio 8212; and you8217;re deep into a world of secrets and sleaze. The capacitor bug, as it8217;s called, draws its power from the line to which it is fixed and costs no more than Rs 10,000. This kind of simple equipment is enough for private security agencies who sometimes use it to help insecure husbands track their wives, or vice versa. Companies also spy on rivals thus.

Then there8217;s the inductive bug: simply press it against a phone wire to listen and record conversation. With a button cell and headphones thrown in, it costs no more than Rs 20,000.

The market is awash in a variety of bugs. Basic Russian-issue bugs cost as little as Rs 3,000. A handful of dealers in Delhi even have brochures offering bugs, scrambling equipment and anti-bugging devices. But apart from government use, all other use is illegal. That doesn8217;t stop anyone. Many companies peddling such equipment have no problem finding buyers. 8216;8216;This country is a paradise for snoopers,8217;8217; said a private security expert in Delhi.

Guide to Eavesdropping

8226; Investigating agencies, with authorisation from the Home Secy or State Chief Secy, ask cellphone companies to monitor the suspect8217;s number
8226; Sleuths then take parallel lines of the number, enabling them to listen to conversations
8226; Every operator has a 15-digit International Mobile Station Identity number, with the country code, national destination code, subscriber number
8226; Each SIM card has a number which lists the GSM code, country code, circle code, vendor code, year, month, number allotted to an operator
8226; Thus, when a call is made or received, the mobile switching centre traces the subscriber8217;s location

Now government bugging 8212; that8217;s a whole different ball game. There8217;s nothing crude and cheap about the landline-bugging equipment owned by the CBI, which has, for example, machines that cost Rs 75 lakh each. Officers simply dial a target number through the gizmo, which then automatically records all conversations made from that number.

New digital technology has made the job that much harder. Cheap bugs can8217;t be fixed onto fibreoptic cables 8212; which break up voice into a binary babble of 1s and 0s, the language of digital communication 8212; as they are to old copper cables. But of course the job can still be done if the lines are all fibre. It just costs much more and all the action is centred around the telephone exchange.

That8217;s certainly the case with cellular phones. All Indian cellphone companies run digital services, which means the equipment to monitor calls is very sophisticated and very expensive. The government simply gets around that by ordering the phone companies to bear the cost of monitoring equipment. Every company must spend about Rs 2 crore to set up a system where seven government agencies can simultaneously monitor a total of 180 calls.

Multinational manufacturers of cellular-phone exchanges say the Indian monitoring network is the most complicated one they have ever set up. It isn8217;t just the size of it, but the fact that seven agencies want monitoring facilities 8212; independent of the other. It is one of the world8217;s largest phone-tapping networks.