National phone-tap facility being tested; likely to come up by middle of 2014

The Central Monitoring System (CMS), which the government is planning to deploy to tap phone calls, will be ready for operation in the mid 2014. 

The Department of Telecom’s telecom enforcement, Resource and Monitoring (TREM) Cell along with the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) is going full swing in developing the system which the DoT is putting to test at Delhi and Haryana through the  main server set up in the national capital.

The CMS will be the DoT's exclusive facility that would assist intelligence and security agencies, besides strategic government departments in phone-tapping.

The DoT would set up separate servers in each State, depending upon the requirements and the number of subscribers. While the facility in Delhi and adjoining States are likely to be ready by year-end, it needs at least two years for establish servers across the country, sources told Deccan Herald.

Minister of State for Communications and IT Milid Deora recently informed Lok Sabha that the government has allocated Rs 400 crore for the CMS . The project has three phases with a time line of 13-14 months each and is likely to be completed by August 2014.

Currently, phone-tapping system is a complex method with investigating agencies wanting to snoop on anybody's phone are required to approach the Union Home Ministry for clearance.

With the clearance, officials would then have to approach the telecom operators for tapping phones.

The new system would enable monitoring of phone calls without the knowledge of the operators, giving DoT complete control on the process. Phones, irrespective of the operators, can be tapped at one location manned round-the-clock by government agencies.

A senior official in the DoT said that the new system will prevent the leakage of tapped phone conversation to public or media such as the leakage happened during the 2G tape scandal.

On that occasion, several private telecom operators tapped the conversations of lobbyists, media persons and politicians, but subsequently many ended up in public.
The government hopes the indigenously built CMS would prevent a repeat of such an incident.

The Indian Telegraph Act authorises security agencies to go for lawful interception. However, unlawful interception is a punishable offence and the offender can be punished with prison terms of up to three years.