Centre to set up special units to monitor calls
The Centre has firmed up a proposal allowing interception of voice calls, 3G voice calls, SMS, MMS and other latest modes of communication by state police special branches in at least 30 locations across the country. This includes monitoring of voice calls, SMS, MMS, GPRS (general packet radio services), 3G voice calls and FAX communications on landlines, CDMA and GSM networks in ‘’real time’’ as well as ‘’offline’’. The move has come at a time when the government is grappling to plug the loopholes in the powers given to government agencies to tap telephones.
The Union home ministry, which firmed up the proposal last month, has said that a Telephone Calls Interception System (TCIS) be set up ‘’in each service provider who has been licenced for the state to legally monitor the calls as and when required’’. The system entails allowing the state police special branches to be able to ‘’monitor, retrieve and digitally store all call content’’ (CC) and ‘’caller intercept related information’’ (CRI) in ‘’real time’’ as well as ‘’off line’’ monitoring for full duration of the call.
The proposal says that the ‘’interception activity of the system must not interfere with the operation of telecommunication network or make the target aware, that he is being monitored’’. The proposal specifies that the system should be capable of intercepting all 3G calls in real time, made from the target phones.
A senior government official said that the MHA has invited bids for setting up of the TCIS under its police modernisation scheme, the last date of which is June 16. The system should be capable of live listening, recording, storage, playback, analysis, post processing at the monitoring centre. “It should be possible to monitor the targets on the basis of telephone number, mobile number, IMEI number and ISMI number,” the proposal says. To prevent any misuse of leakage of the sensitive information, the software should provide multi level password security for the user. It should also have an integrated CD/DVD juke box for easy data sharing.
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