NEW DELHI: Some startling figures tumbled out on rampant phone tapping in the country when telecom service provider Reliance Communications told the Supreme Court on Monday that the authorities had asked it to tap 1.51 lakh phone numbers in a five-year span between 2006 and 2010.
This works out to an average of over 30,000 telephone interceptions every year by a single service provider on the orders of various law enforcing agencies. Or, over 82 telephones were intercepted every day by a single service provider.
Reliance is the second-largest service provider with a subscriber base of 12.57 crore as in 2010. The biggest service provider, Bharti Airtel, had 15.25 crore subscribers in 2010, while Vodafone's subscriber base was just a shade lower than Reliance's at 12.43 crore. State-owned BSNL came fourth with 8.67 crore subscribers.
If Reliance's ratio of phones tapped to the number of its subscribers were to be taken as representative and applied to other service providers, it is a fair assumption that government agencies were tapping more than one lakh phones every year.
In Delhi alone, Reliance tapped a total of 3,588 phones in 2005 when the teledensity was low compared to today. It also included Amar Singh's number which was put under surveillance — allegedly on a forged letter from Delhi Police.
Four days back, a bench of Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly had expressed concern over the large number of interceptions being ordered by the agencies and the "grave danger" this posed to the citizen's right to privacy.
In an affidavit tendered by senior advocate Ram Jethmalani before the bench, Reliance Communications said: "The total number of interceptions in 2005 in respect of Delhi Service Area were 3,588. There were about 1.51 lakh number of cases for monitoring/interception during the period 2006-10 in all India."
Responding to the court's observation that no service provider worth its salt would intercept a phone based on a purported communication full of grammatical and spelling mistakes, Reliance said most of the genuine interception orders were identical to the now known forged letter as far as spelling and grammatical mistakes were concerned. It cited a genuine interception order of February 1, 2011, received from the Delhi Police to make its point.
After detailing the precautions it had taken, including writing to the authorities to authenticate the letter asking for interception of Amar Singh's phone, Reliance said it received no response, yet it was duty bound under a bona fide perception of the letter to continue interception for 15 days.
"A bare perusal of various letters sent by Ranjit Narayan (then Joint Commissioner of Delhi Police) and R Narayanswami (then Delhi home secretary) show that the letters dated October 22, 2005 and November 9, 2005 (both purportedly forged ones) were similar to other letters received from them," Reliance said while claiming its innocence in the interception controversy.
It said request for surveillance of a telephone from the law enforcement agencies could not be postponed based on spelling mistakes in the communication from agencies as it called for immediate action "for safety of general public at large and in the interest of the nation." It added: "Postponing compliance on the ground of inconsequential mistakes like spelling errors may conceivably lead to a serious terrorist attack and the blame may fall on us."
"The service providers are also required to provide assistance to law enforcement agencies as per the licence condition. Any violation of it can lead to a penalty of Rs 50 crore," Reliance said.
It said service providers do not keep a record of conversations taped from a phone under surveillance. Reliance Communication said it did not have the technology to record the conversations and that there was no law mandating the service provider to record the conversations and submit it to the law enforcement agencies.
TOI
