Government Warns on Unauthorised Phone Tapping

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Govt warns on unauthorised phone tapping

The Economic Times l 31st December 2010 l New Delhi

NEW DELHI: The India . government on Thursday warned private and public companies illegally tapping phone calls, asking them to reveal information on communication surveillance equipment, foreign or indigenous, within 60 days or face prosecution.

The department of telecom in a statement made it clear that power of interception of telegraph messages was in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity of India. Companies or agencies indulging in these practices will be booked and punished as per the provisions of Indian Telegraph Act, it added.

Within 60 days, the department’s enforcement, resource and monitoring (TERM) cells will collect information from people or companies that import, procure or possess the equipment or sub-systems capable of monitoring, intercepting and surveillance of communication.

The government can seize equipment and imprison non-compliant entities up to three years with a fine of `1,000. The statement added that under the law, no equipment or sub-system could be used for unauthorised communication network, monitoring, intercepting and surveillance of communication.

DoT said the government is also independently compiling, through its own sources, information about persons or companies that possess, have imported or procured or assembled or manufactured the equipment or sub-systems having capabilities of monitoring, intercepting and surveillance of communication.

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Ministry to ask telcos not to leak subscriber information to equipment manufacturers

The Economic Times l 31st December l New Delhi

The telecoms department will ask mobile phone companies not to send any subscriber related information to equipment manufacturers when troubleshooting operations on the networks are carried out.

Following a tip-off from the Intelligence Bureau, the telecoms ministry is set to write to all cellphone companies mandating that executives from service providers be compulsorily present when engineers from telecom gear makers access mobile networks here.

Telcos will also be asked to change system passwords if the same has been shared with vendors during emergencies.

The networks of India’s largest phone firms — Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications , Vodafone , Tata Tele and Idea — are being managed by either Sweden’s Ericsson , Finland-based Nokia Siemens or Paris-headquartered Alcatel-Lucent. Reliance has outsourced its GSM network management to China’s Huawei while Loop Telecom has tied up with another Chinese firm, ZTE, for its GSM rollout across India.

The IB has asked the telecoms department to mandate that vendor engineers’ not be allowed to take any data or customer information on mobile networks here without specific authorisation, scrutiny and record by competent authorities of service providers.

The home ministry also wants the department of telecoms to conduct surprise inspections at server locations to ensure compliance to these guidelines. ET had accessed internal telecom department notes on these security concerns raised by the home ministry.

The IB’s move comes after the agency monitored Bharti Airtel’s legal interception mechanism for third-generation ( 3G )) services and found the telco to be ‘sending system logs’ to gear makers for analysis or trouble shooting. Bharti Airtel is sending system logs for the trouble shooting purposes, the department’s additional director general for security DS Aswar said in an internal note.

The telecoms ministry’s security wing in the internal note added that the logs sent by Bharti Airtel to vendors may have contained customer information.

However, ET has not been able to independently verify this. A Bharti spokesperson said: “We do not share any customer or security sensitive information with our equipment vendors. However, we cannot comment on any internal government note.”

Earlier this year, India had unveiled a new set of security guidelines for telecom gear makers which also mandated that foreign equipment companies to put their software in the equivalent of a sealed envelope to be opened by Indian authorities only during a security threat. The rules, set by India’s security establishment, also require vendors to employ only Indian nationals as engineers in the country.