OVER four years ago, a small-time detective in the Capital managed to forge a letter in the name of the principal secretary, home, Delhi government, and procured a parallel telephone line from a private mobile operator to tap the phone of Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh for nearly three months.
But the technological boom since that controversial episode means that you need to be wary not just of such a forgery which can enable an undesirable person to listen in to your phone calls. The government can now also park an SUV two kilometers away from your house or office and tap all your phone conversations even if the intelligence agency concerned has no authorisation to do so or did have authorisation, but only for one person out of the thousands in that two-kilometer radius whose phone conversations are being collected in the electronic sweep by this machine.
Inside the SUV will be a Rs 5 cr machine codenamed 'Eagle' which was procured first by the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) in 2005.
NTRO was supposed to distribute these ''eagles'' to the Intelligence Bureau (IB), the organisation mandated by the government to tap phones, and not the NTRO. None in the government is willing to divulge which intelligence organisations and state police units have the 'Eagles', but a source said this machine is available to anyone - even private individuals - for a price. ''It's also available on rent,'' he said. ''The Delhi-NCR region alone has 11 companies that assemble this machine.''
IT IS also learnt that the Police in seven states of Delhi, Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand already have the machine.
However, since we don't have any privacy laws, it becomes next to impossible to track down violators or to sue them.
'' This new technology is really worrisome,'' says Prakash Singh, former BSF Director General and a former chief of UP Police.
He has long been at helm of the state police which taps phones of criminals. ''But that was after the state home secretary's authorisation.
This new machine leaves no footprints. You just cannot trace back its records, which can be easily deleted.
Now, you can tap anyone's phone and later deny it and no one can prove the conversations were tapped,'' says Singh.
Former IB chief, D C Pathak says the idea of authorised phone tapping is to protect national security. He says, '' Authorised phone tapping has to aid the national security objective.'' ''Intelligence organisations are tightly run bodies.
Procedures are laid down for phone tapping. The home secretary's permission is needed as it cannot be ordered by just anybody. But unauthorised tapping can cause more systemic harm.'' The government was also in a bind to explain the same in Parliament last week after the publication of a magazine report that the NTRO's Eagles had spied on politicians too.
''There are legal and authorised interceptions and there may be unauthorised and illegal interceptions. If there has been illegal interception, we will go to the bottom of the matter and take action against those who are responsible,'' said home minister P. Chidambaram. He added that no authority had been given to intercept the conversations of any politician.
So who does the government allow to tap phones? Intelligence Bureau (IB), Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Central Economic Intelligence Bureau (CEIB), Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and all state police forces can tap phones if they suspect illegal activity, ranging from a terror involvement to evasion of taxes.
For the Central agencies, the Union home secretary G K Pillai is the sole authorised officer to give permission for tapping of phones.
Each agency has to record in writing as to why it needs permission to tap a phone. Home secretaries in 30 state governments are also authorised to give permission to their respective state police forces.
Permission can be given in one go for a maximum of 60 days, extendable twice for 60 days each time. The agencies then get a parallel line to your phone to listen in. All this material has to be kept documented and produced in court as evidence if needed. There are some safeguards for you too. If there is no public emergency or threat to public safety, the phones cannot be tapped, the Supreme Court had ruled in 2007.
Then, there is the right to privacy - the state should not interfere in the lives of citizens unless it is absolutely necessary and that too after proper authorisation.
But what explains the 'Eagles' that can record a sweep of conversations of multiple people? ''When these vehicles left the office of the concerned organisation, were specific telephone numbers given to them (for bugging) as required by the Supreme Court,'' asks Arun Jaitley, Supreme Court lawyer and the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha. ''The Supreme Court and the Indian Telegraph Act do not permit the use of technology where a general sweep takes place and everybody within the two kilometre radius can lose his privacy.
Does the law allow such a clean sweep bugging to take place?'' Chidambaram defends the NTRO, but it has more to do with his demand to put the NTRO under his command rather than the National Security Advisor ( who is not accountable to Parliament) to whom NTRO reports at present.
''The government is examining whether the NTRO should now be placed under a ministry so that a minister will be accountable to Parliament,'' says Chidambaram.
He told Parliament last week that NTRO's existing technology was inferior to that in many developed countries. ''There are countries with technology far superior to ours and are many, many years ahead of the NTRO.'' The home ministry agrees that it needs to rein in the 'Eagles', whichever agency may be using them.
''The NTRO has acquired a technology. That technology must be put to use and that technology must be put to use subject to very stringent safeguards,'' says Chidambaram.
''We are in the process of reviewing the entire functioning of the NTRO and putting in place safeguards that will keep pace with the technology that NTRO has acquired and, if I may say, that NTRO will acquire in the future.'' But can our intelligence agencies resist political pressure to use 'Eagles' to tap an Opposition leader's phone or use these machines to get sweeps of conversations of multiple people besides issues of national security? Only visible action will speak of the government's promise in that case.
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