Telephone tapping war spills over to states

At a closed door meeting between private cellular operators for the states, intelligence agencies and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) held last week, the intelligence agencies have refused to simplify their demands despite repeated requests from private operators.

As in the case of the metros, the intelligence agencies havedemanded that they be provided facilities to tap 180 telephone lines per operator in each state each state has two operators. These agencies had also insisted that operators keep them abreast with updated subscriber lists on a regular basis. During last week’s meeting, these agencies have demanded that similar availability of circuits be made in the states as well.

Apart from the cost involved in giving separate tapping facilities to each one of the agencies, private cellular operators in states are wary about the fact that they may have to succumb to pressures from junior level officials without proper authority letters for tapping which may go against the Supreme Court verdict protecting privacy of subscribers. This is in contrast with the situation in metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Calcutta where tapping facilities have already been provided by operators as senior officials are positioned in these centres.

According to estimates, each private cellular operator will need to spend around Rs threecrore to set up the hardware and software specifically allowing intelligence agencies access into their systems. Moreover, experts say that this equipment will have to be installed at every Mobile Switching Centre (MSC) of a cellular operator in a state. Normally every operators will have to have at least three to four MSCs in a large state and two in smaller ones. For the 40 operators in 20 circles tendered so far, the expenditure could range anywhere in the region of Rs 120 crore to Rs 400 crore.

Private operators had earlier complained of harassment from intelligence agencies in the metros before the complete installation of the monitoring facilities in the metros. They had said that often officials from these agencies woke up technical staff of the cellular companies and asked to be taken to the MSC from where they could monitor calls. operators are worried about the contempt of the Supreme Court order for which operators may be held responsible.