New Delhi, April 9
Big brother has just got bigger. The Department of Telecom (DOT) last week issued an order to all private cellular service providers that they will have to provide ‘‘monitoring’’ on all value-added services.
In other words, not content with the right to tap cell phones, the government now wants snooping rights over short message service (SMS) and GPRS-enabled e-mail
currently provided through Blackberry and other assorted instruments.
The order, issued to all service providers, says that they will have to provide access to all the agencies, namely the Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing, the Enforcement Directorate, Military Intelligence and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and other financial regulatory authorities such as Customs Intelligence.
In effect, this means that along with providing monitoring facilities of dedicated lines (demanded separately by all the authorised agencies), now infrastructure will also have to be provided for monitoring of SMS and e-mail.
Sources say that the new order effectively circumvents the existing safeguards put in place by the Supreme Court which ensure that phones are tapped only after a signed order from the Union Home Secretary after convincing grounds have been provided. While, abuse has been rampant, the new order virtually makes it official since providers are not sure if the same rules and safeguards will be followed.
Says a major mobile service provider: “At present we store SMS for a given duration and then they are destroyed. We do not know how we will be able to manage once we have to comply with this order. As far as e-mail is concerned, it raises questions about the citizen’s right to privacy.’’
While the catch-all of national security is used by the government to assume blanket rights to snoop, all service providers say that providing additional monitoring will add to the users’ cost since all the agencies always want separate dedicated lines.
A senior government official justified the latest move citing security, the problem of Naxalites and the huge market manipulations. He said the ‘‘new manipulators are very smart. They do not talk on
the phone but use SMS to communicate.’’
The DOT order wants time-bound compliance and providers are scared of taking on the regulator, saying that whenever they resisted snooping diktats in the past, they faced harassment.
Incidentally, India holds the distinction of being the country that records the maximum number of SMS messages on any given day.
The writer is an anchor with Janmat TV who writes
regularly for The Tribune
