Phone tapping now easy, commonplace

Telecom service provider Essar is in the news following allegations that it tapped the phones of several high profile individuals including corporate honchos, current Cabinet ministers and staff in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s stint as PM. If experts are to be believed, in the years since the Vajpayee government, tapping of phones has become as easy as buying a packet of potato chips.

In fact, according to sources, it is not just private players who are involved but also the government playing Big Brother in citizens’ lives. Besides, with a decade having passed since Essar allegedly tapped phones, technology has made great strides.

Sources in the know have gone to the extent of saying that the home department issues regular requests to private telcos to tap into phones. “There are nearly 8,000 live tapping orders issued by the department to telcos to tap into phones. This is a very high number, even considering how many highly influential people we have,” said a source with knowledge of the matter.

According to sources, the government is developing and has partly put in place three systems — National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), DRDO Netra, and Central Monitoring System (CMS).

Of these, NATGRID is said to be the largest integrated intelligence grid connecting databases of core security agencies of the Government of India. Developed in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks, the system will be used allegedly to collect and analyse data and study patterns of intelligence that can be later readily accessed by intelligence agencies.

The ambitious project, which may be running by early next year, will link all databases available with the government. What this basically means is that the government can now study citizen data including bank account details, transaction patterns, information submitted for passport applications, and vehicle details and look for patterns of terrorist or illegal activities. What is more important is that citizen data now includes telephone records.

As for the CMS system, it was proposed a few years ago and is the baby of Telecom Enforcement, Resource and Monitoring (TREM) and Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT). In this, the government allegedly plans to collect and use data submitted as part of Aadhaar card and other essential service applications and submit it to all intelligence agencies, later linking it to NATGRID.

“Earlier, the government had to inform telecom service providers if they wanted to trace a user through his/ her phone or even tap into someone’s phone. But now, the government has systems in place that ensure it can do so without telcos even knowing,” said Nikhil Pahwa, editor, Medianama. Asked if telcos, when issued license to set up systems in the country, were faced with a condition to leave a back-door entry to facilitate government surveillance, Mr Pahwa said, “CMS is the government’s backdoor entry in telecom companies.”

Speaking about the various ways in which phone calls could be tapped, Mr Pahwa said there are devices that allowed users to listen in to conversations.

“There are GSM sniffers, which, if placed near a house or used by a person who is in proximity to the person whose conversation is to be overheard, can do so easily. This allows a person to listen in to calls,” he said.

Sources have informed that the government is pushing for low encryption so as to facilitate surveillance. “Instant messaging service WhatsApp recently introduced end-to-end encryption, which means the message is encrypted from both ends — sender and receiver,” explained an expert.

“But let’s take Google Hangout for example; here, when a person hits ‘Send,’ the message goes to the Google server and then reaches the recipient. In the time it takes to travel, even if it is a few seconds, it can be intercepted, read and recorded,” the expert added.

Sources in fact said that while the UPA government introduced the system, the NDA government has been slowly and steadily pumping in money into surveillance projects. A PIB release issued on March 1, 2016 informs that 2011-12 saw Rs 18.61 crore spent on the NATGRID project and the number has now increased to Rs 49.5 crore in 2015-16. Supreme Court lawyer Suren Uppal, said to be representing Albasit Khan, former head of security at Essar, and the man who was allegedly asked to supervise the tapping activity, is the one making these allegations. According to the complaint filed by Mr Uppal, who has even submitted it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Essar Group allegedly recorded “umpteen conversations” between 2001 and 2006.