New Delhi:
A few big telecom companies would be hearing from the Department of Telecom (DoT) soon, asking them to explain what and how they are using "Off Air" passive Global System for Mobile or GSM monitoring machines.
Off Air monitoring does not need any cooperation or intervention from the GSM telecom operators and directly monitors a limited number of targets within a limited range. Therefore, the governmental interface required otherwise to listen on to phone conversations is completely done away with. Passive off-the-air GSM interception systems can be compared with early day radio scanners which were used for intercepting analogue mobile communication. Also, these systems do not transmit any signal and therefore, are very difficult to detect.
According to the DoT a huge number of these machines were imported from 2008 to about 2010. It was only in 2010 that capabilities of these machines and the apparent threat to privacy came to be known widely; the equipment was hurriedly removed from the Open General List (OGL) and put in the restricted items list.
The DoT and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) have now, with the help of the Finance Ministry, prepared a list of companies who have imported off-air passive monitoring or equipment which can be used to assemble these machines. But the bad news is, of the 45-odd suspected machines identified, the government doesn't have the address of importers of as many as 24 machines.
A few companies have already informed that they were using some of the equipment for legitimate activities like measuring signal strength. However, top technical hands associated with the National Technical Research Organization (NTRO) don't buy this. According to them, equipment to measure signal strength is much easily available, negating the need to buy such costly equipment. More importantly, they also point that telecom companies were measuring signal strength much before the advent of these passive off-air monitoring machines. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has been asked to investigate as many as 17 companies that had imported off-air monitoring machines.
Also, the DoT's list of the companies - which are suspected to have either directly imported these machines or equipment which can be used to assemble passive off-air monitoring - accessed by NDTV reveal that many of the suspect companies are not connected to telecom. In fact, some of the companies appear to deal with lighting solutions.
R Chandrashekhar, Secretary, DoT, told NDTV that the government was trying to assess how these equipment were being used. He also said that some government agencies that had imported these machines have informed the government. DoT sources told NDTV that these include the Delhi, Haryana and Jharkhand Police. Also, four Haryana-based private firms had also accepted to possessing these machines. The Haryana Police has been asked to proceed against these firms.