[Reader-list] Network Surveillance in India

[Ravi Sundaram]

For many years journalism in India has kept away from privacy issues, 
telephone tapping is almost naturalised under the name of national 
security. Check out this piece by the Hindu's Sandip Dikshit, which is rare 
and probably the first of its kind in looking at these issues, within the 
context of the whole intra-mobile company war that has erupted recently.
Ravi.S


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Time to ring in changes
Sandeep Dikshit The Hindu 26thJjanuary 2003

AS PRIVATISATION gathers momentum in the telecom sector, there are growing 
doubts over several key issues relating to the rights of consumers.

Despite assertions by successive Governments regarding introduction of new 
age legislation and the setting up of an organisation to referee over 
telecom companies, we do not appear to have travelled very far towards 
ensuring privacy and a fair deal for telecom subscribers.

Recent incidents of invasion of privacy and numerous complaints from 
subscribers about the service point to the need for a debate on the working 
of private phone companies. Rarely addressed by political parties and civil 
society, the two subjects have to be brought into the public domain as soon 
as possible for restitution. As more and more people turn to higher 
technology-based phones of all varieties due to falling rates, privacy and 
grievance redress will become more and more contentious.

Grievance redress, especially when more and more individuals opt for 
corporate-operated phone services, is a major issue. But more emotive is 
the right to privacy. There is no definite indication that privacy is being 
respected as per the Supreme Court's guidelines issued in 1996. As India's 
cream shifts to cellular phones as the preferred mode of communication, 
more and more instances come to light of not just security agencies but 
even cellular company employees selling telephone records of rival 
companies for a consideration or just listening in on conversations.
In one celebrated case, that is still talked about in hushed tones because 
of the people involved, a top notch political fixer persuaded his friend, 
who owned a cellular company, to furnish him with transcripts of the 
conversations his female acquaintance had with a top IT company executive. 
The woman came to know of the snooping and it required the combined efforts 
of several worthies to douse the fires.

Reliable sources also affirm that the recent attempt to overthrow the 
BSP-BJP coalition Government in Uttar Pradesh was incapacitated because of 
`informal' cell phone tapping. The phone records of a 
hotelier-turned-politician, who was among those financing the rebels, were 
turned over to politicians interested in keeping Mayawati in power. From 
then on it was not too difficult to choke the flow of funds.

In due course, the scandal and the revolt were forgotten. But there have 
been occasions when the issue of privacy while using cellular phones has 
threatened to burst into the public domain. The first time, when the late 
South African cricket captain, Hansie Cronje's cellular phone was tapped 
and later when a cellular phone company allegedly gave the police cell 
phone records of a person who claimed that the Delhi police had in cold 
blood gunned down two unarmed persons in the basement of Ansal Plaza. On 
the basis of the records of the cell phone which also gave away its 
carrier's movements, the police claimed that the alleged eyewitness was not 
at the site of the encounter with the alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists.

On both occasions, statist and right-wing mentality prevailed over the 
voices of dissent raised by civil rights activists. Since the police were 
proved right in the Cronje case, the merit of tapping the phone was not 
investigated further. In the shoot-out case too, perhaps the whistle-blower 
could not stand the might of the state. He did serve notice to the cellular 
company accusing it of breaching his right to privacy but little was heard 
after that. Had the person persisted with his query  "under what authority 
of law has your company divulged the private information and details of the 
mobile phone?"  who knows, the lid may have been blown of a shadowy 
practice that appears to be increasingly used by some companies.
Against these examples, security agencies can cite several instances to 
prove that tapping of cellular phones has yielded rich dividends in the 
form of nabbing elusive criminals. But that is hardly of comfort to 
citizens who suspect that their right to privacy may be getting violated, 
not just in the national interest but by other vested interests. To set the 
record straight, many companies have carried forward their culture of 
corporate uprightness to cellular operations as well. But there are several 
others who, to put it mildly, would never qualify for a corporate 
uprightness award. And it is they who are cause for concern because India's 
cream relies predominantly on mobile phones for honing business strategies, 
striking political alliances or simply indulging in intimate conversation.

The need to bring the issue under the public spotlight has become more 
pressing because global trends show that fixed-line phones will be replaced 
in urban areas by mobile phones and India may be no exception to the trend. 
But being privately owned, cell companies are more vulnerable to the 
dictates of security agencies which have extracted 180 lines from each of 
them for tapping.

The Supreme Court, while upholding tapping, had set out the guidelines in 
1996 when cell phones were just making their appearance. With more 
subscribers forecast to graduate to cell phones, this would be an 
appropriate time to not only bring new technology into the ambit of 
judicial guidelines but also examine whether previous ones were effective.

According to Rajeev Dhavan, lawyer, "the system of review set up by the 
Supreme Court enabling those who authorise taps to review their own orders 
with a conclave of colleagues is arbitrary, secretive, shabby and an insult 
to the protection of privacy and civil liberties. There was a time when 
many who rule the country today were convinced that India's apparatus of 
phone tapping was invidious. But now they are in-charge of this form of 
state surveillance."

As compared to fixed phones, tapping of cellular phones can lead to greater 
invasion of privacy. Cellular phone company computers can record millions 
of movements going back to more than a year and therefore the location of a 
user at any given time or date can be traced to within a few hundred meters 
of the exact spot. Security agencies are understood to be actively making 
what are called "plotter's charts" in their terminology. The cell phone of 
a person visiting the national capital can be locked in their beams by 
sleuths and even if he does not discuss confidential issues, the signals 
can track his movements.

National security was an overriding concern that forced previous victims of 
phone tapping including Atal Behari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani to go 
slow on installing safety mechanisms when they took over the reins of the 
Government. However, sophistication in tapping will ensure that in spite of 
procedures to protect the average citizen from indiscriminate tapping, 
intelligence agencies can carry on with tapping that would help them avert 
threats from anti-national elements. For instance, the Research and 
Analysis Wing (RAW) is known to possess computers that can catch a key word 
in a conversation and then record the entire conversation. The computer is 
fed with the name of the wanted person and any conversation where that 
person's name is used will be recorded.

The Supreme Court in its 1996 review did not suggest periodic reviews or 
independent panels that could look into the malaise of indiscriminate 
tapping. With tens of thousands of circuits having already been allocated 
to intelligence agencies, and more to be provided by new phone companies 
entering the market, this could be the right time to prevent India from 
becoming an eavesdroppers' paradise. The review must also ensure that 
owners and employees of cellular companies are denied the pleasure of 
delving in their backyards for details of persons called by a particular 
subscriber. There is an urgent need to shore up public confidence by 
prescribing guidelines because several of the entrants are known to have 
taken questionable short-cuts on their way to becoming mega corporations.

As is the case with tapping, the issue of a satisfactory subscriber 
grievance redress machinery has also not been the subject of public 
discourse. Even trenchant critics of liberalisation of telecom services and 
parliamentary committees have not applied themselves to suggesting a 
suitable framework.

Though state-run companies have earned the reputation of being sluggish, 
the years of liberalisation have seen a remarkable improvement in their 
complaints machinery. The Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited and, to a 
lesser extent, the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited have used computerisation 
to ensure that the fault reporting system became more streamlined. Even 
otherwise, the complaints mechanism of these companies has matured over 
time and is much broader since the two companies are answerable to 
Parliament. But that is not the case with private firms. The increase in 
complaints against billing is directly proportionate to the rise in the 
customer base. A little while ago, consumers were bewildered by the large 
number of tariff packages offered by the companies but that was set right 
by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). However, consumers 
still complain about unexplained charges for roaming.

The TRAI and greater competition do keep the companies alert. However, 
grievance redress panels on a countrywide basis are required. Instead of 
opting for bureaucrats and judicial authorities, easily accessible consumer 
forums are required. The entry of new companies should serve to accelerate 
the thought process in this regard because many of them have asked 
subscribers to pay with post-dated cheques. As a result there are bound to 
be more disputes.

The TRAI has covered some ground in this matter. Due to budgetary 
constraints it has largely opted for indirect monitoring of broad customer 
satisfaction criteria such as network performance from the point of view of 
call success rate, service access delays, call drop rate and percentage of 
connections with good voice quality. It is expected that periodic rating of 
companies on the basis of this criteria will force them to provide 
efficient service.

The TRAI itself admits that this is not a complete exercise since the vital 
component of customer feedback is missing. It has proposed empanelling 
independent agencies that could carry out surveys of customers of each 
company. But even this is incomplete since individual subscribers are left 
unattended. Due to extra costs involved, private companies are bound to 
resist setting up easily accessible complaints cells on the lines of those 
being run by BSNL and MTNL all over the country. A public debate on 
enabling a subscriber with even the smallest compliant to get a hearing is 
of vital importance.

A common refrain is of existing help line numbers of cellular companies 
turning hostile when subscribers report unexplained debiting from cash 
cards or seek urgent refund of security deposits. The TRAI has addressed 
itself to this aspect also. It has prescribed strict billing complaint 
resolution norms such as asking cell companies to resolve 99 per cent of 
all complaints within four weeks and cent per cent within a year. The 
billing complaints too must be less than 2 per 1,000 bills issued. But as 
is the case with network management criteria, the TRAI would have to 
process a mass of data to arrive at national or operator-specific figures. 
The individual subscriber has been left in the cold. There is an urgent 
need to correct this situation especially when there are one crore cellular 
subscribers already and, if experts are to be believed, the number will 
double by next year.