Union Home Minister P Chidambaram told Parliament today that no politicians were tapped, no tapping was authorised and nothing has been found in the records of the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) to substantiate the Outlook report. Sources said that one reason for this denial could be that the conversations mentioned in the report involving Digvijay Singh and Nitish Kumar were,in all probability,captured in an electronic sweep during deployment of passive interceptors in Delhis diplomatic enclave. All calls within 2-3 km of these interceptors are captured in the babel recorded and the brief snatches of conversations were picked up due to the fact that several state Bhavans are also nearby. Officials in NTROs communication interception cell recall that these conversations like countless others were only scanned but neither logged nor retained in the agencys conversation bank. So the phone-tapping controversy raises the important issue of the ethics of the liberal use of such passive interceptors particularly in urban areas. Among agencies,the NTRO was the first to install the interceptors which they called Eagles inside SUVs and move them to border areas for gathering intelligence. These interceptors were meant to capture calls made by infiltrating militants who used Pakistani SIM cards. Of the countless conversations captured,the NTRO would then sift for that one valuable snatch for example,one about a possible strike. The first interceptors were assembled for the NTRO in 2005. Sources said that when then National Security Advisor M K Narayanan was given a demonstration of what these Eagles could do at the agencys Mayur Vihar facility he is said to have urged extreme caution in the way in which these would be used given the wealth of information they captured in their huge electronic sweep. He asked for the equipment to be handed over to the Intelligence Bureau underlining that gathering domestic intelligence was NTROs mandate. But the NTRO continued to be tasked with gathering inputs in border areas and moved the Eagles to trouble spots,say after the Batla House encounter,the Delhi blasts or more recently,the Pune blasts. With passive interceptors being devised for covering GSM/CDMA phones as well and their capabilities being enhanced to concurrently covering 256 channels or calls,the IB,Research and Analysis Wing,and local police agencies also procured them. The cost: depending on the customer requirement,between Rs Rs 1-10 crore each. With allegations of NTRO misusing its powers now in the open,pressure will build on the Government to clean up and end the bitter turf war within agencies. The first step has already been taken as first reported by The Indian Express by a full-fledged audit of the organization ordered by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). Sources in the CAG say that while NTRO was exempted from audits since its inception in 2004,it was its spiraling budget (for the current year pegged at Rs 1,850 crore) and the organizations request for flexibility in purchases that made the CAG see red. Narayanan had to concede to the demand of CAG Vinod Rai and the first-ever audit of an intelligence agency commenced in February. Also worrisome are charges of corruption,nepotism and violations of serve cadre rules in recruitments flying around with regards NTRO. A former technology chief of the organization,after leaving the NTRO,has filed over 70 RTI requests with the PMO,the NTRO and the CAG demanding answers on the /going-ons within the secret establishment. The CAG will shortly take a call on whether to make its findings on NTRO public.
