Phone tapping: Govt looks at safeguards

While the government has forcefully denied having authorised the tapping of the phones of any politician,the recent controversy has prompted a major stock-taking of the systems in place to prevent illegal tapping....

While the government has forcefully denied having authorised the tapping of the phones of any politician,the recent controversy has prompted a major stock-taking of the systems in place to prevent illegal tapping.

The initial inquiry has confirmed Home Minister P Chidambarams assurance to Parliament that no authorised phone-tapping had taken place. Sources said the government was now trying to ascertain whether anyone had resorted to illegal tapping and if so,the measures which could be taken to prevent such instances in future.

What has heightened the concern of the government is the easy availability of the requisite technology to carry out phone tapping. Sources said passive interceptors,mounted on vehicles and capable of capturing telephone conversations within a radius of 3 to 4 km,are in the possession not only of the National Technical Research Organisation the agency which is alleged to have carried out the tapping in the latest incident but of some state police departments and other organisations as well.

Costing just a few crore rupees,these machines have been acquired by the police departments of Delhi,Maharashtra,Punjab,Haryana,Jharkhand,Rajasthan,Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh,sources said. Some private entities also have these machines. They said the different parts of the interceptor are often imported as separate equipment and subsequently assembled into a phone-tapping machine.

As a first step,the government is trying to make a list of all such interceptors in the possession of different agencies in the country. Simultaneously,a technical exercise is underway to look at the options to prevent the misuse of these interceptors.