India to Increase Monitoring of Mobile Phone Records
India's government is to set up a Centre for Communication Security Research and Monitoring to help security agencies intercept mobile phone calls and analyse billing records. The centre will also keep copies of select Call Data Records (CDRs) in a permanent archive, Minister of State for IT and Communication Jyotiraditya Scindia informed Lok Sabha in a written reply.
"The Centre will provide mandatory access to Law Enforcement agencies for intercepting, monitoring and analysing the activities of required customers and their social networking, both proactively online and through post analysis of information like CDRs."
The operators are already required to keep copies of all their CDRs for one year as a condition of their operating license.
The move comes as the government is trying to force Research in Motion (RIM) to open up its BlackBerry servers to allow the interception of emails.
India's Information Technology Act of 2000 grants the security services the right to intercept electronic communications - but as it cannot be enforced in Canada, there has been concerns that BlackBerry emails and texts would be impossible to monitor. Although it is possible to put "sniffers" inside the network gateways to record information sent to the BlackBerry servers, the information is encrypted and the security services would need access to the encryption keys to be able to read them.
BlackBerry manufacturer, Research on Motion said in a statement "RIM operates in more than 130 countries around the world and respects the regulatory requirements of governments. RIM does not comment on confidential regulatory matters."
Posted to the site on 21st April 2008
