What is the Mobile Trapping ?
Mobile Trapping means when you are calling to your friend or relatives, if your mobile is trapped from Indian Security Agencies (CBI, Police, CID, Military, ATS etc.,) they can listen the your complete call.
Over a million Indian mobile phone users, across service providers, are under the surveillance of Central agencies in India through the year. Officially, the Government will admit to over 6,000 telephones in New Delhi being tapped. This secret hot list has as many as 400 bureaucrats and military officials monitored on suspicion of corruption, 200 corporate honchos, over 50 top journalists, an equal number of fixers, a dozens of arms dealers, two dozen NGOs and about 100 high society pimps, drug dealers and hawala operators and contract killers. This is in addition to suspected militants, their supporters and sympathisers and known criminals.
In United States of America all mobile users mobiles under surveillance or trapped. All mobile customers mobile calls trapped. From this trapping system if you are said a word like BOMB or MURDER or DRUGS it will be automatically shown to officers to your all details along with your track records and your present movements. From this system crime will be deducting automatically.
In India an attempt to widen its surveillance net, the Home Ministry has now sought suitable amendments to the Indian Telegraph Act in 1885, to allow active intervention for tapping phones and monitoring Internet communication. Home Secretary G.K. Pillai says the home ministry is pursuing changes to the country's telecom laws to bring clarity in the Government's authority to intercept highly secure corporate communications. This will be part of broader changes related to lawful intercept policy and privacy.
Everyday, the sole authoriser of such Central wiretaps, receives hundreds of fresh written requests for electronic surveillance. A majority of requests emanate from the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Income Tax Department, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in India.
Additional requests also come from state agencies who need the home ministry's permission to intercept phones in Union Territories. Law enforcement agencies can tap a phone without the home secretary's permission for the first week. Thereafter, a tap can be done only after a strong case is made. In reality, a weak argument works. Crime and terrorism are the familiar rationales but they leave the door open for multi-level abuse. Each state has an average of 2,000 to 3,000 phones under surveillance at any given time.
Phone tapping is uncoordinated. Various agencies monitor numbers in silos. At times, a single number is simultaneously being monitored by multiple agencies of the state and Centre. The proliferation of off-the-shelf sophisticated listening devices and absence of a Central database compound the problem. Except in certain special laws, wiretaps can be used only as corroborative evidence in courts. But it is so easily done with such little effort that it becomes the first recourse for law enforcement authorities. With an increasing reliance on phone tapping as operational tools, the surveillance society is only set for consolidation.
In United States of America like system where only a judge authorises wiretaps after reviewing the evidence. "Civil liberties are far too important to be left to the executive or the home secretary. There is every danger of wrong permissions being given out, resulting in indiscriminate tapping," says former chief justice of India.
What The Law Says for mobile trapping :
Phone tapping is allowed under the general provisions of Section 5 of the Indian Telegraph Act, but only in "public emergency, or in the interest of public safety". In 1997, the Supreme Court, in response to a petition filed by justice Sachar, laid down five precepts for intercepting conversations-in the interests of national sovereignty and integrity, state security, friendly relations with foreign states, public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of an offence. "Tapping phones especially for tax evasion and corruption needs to be done only in the rarest of rare cases," says former IPS officer.
There are seven Central agencies authorised to tap the telephones - the IB, ED, Delhi Police, CBI, DRI, Central Economic Intelligence Bureau and the Narcotics Control Bureau in India. "Phone tapping is a legal instrument. It should be kept in safe custody of the court or very few officers should have access to it. Leaking tapes are like leaking official secrets; it not only adversely affects an individual but is also harmful to investigations and the prosecution process".
Who Is Being Tapped:
Often a hint of suspicion can put you under the scanner. Home ministry officials became suspicious of the flamboyant lifestyle of IAS officer. The bureaucrat shunned his official accommodation in favour of a plush guesthouse provided by his friend and co-accused. Phones were kept under observation where he was heard referring to "Ukranian and Russian software", a code for prostitutes. Hotels were referred to as hardware and bribes were called laddoos.
He was charged with giving clearance to a US-based telecom company, Telecordia, for mobile number portability. Dozens of other bureaucrats are believed to be under surveillance for similar reasons. But for every legal case, there are hundreds of illegal wire taps. Five years ago, a Mumbai newspaper publicised explicit phone conversations of actor Salman Khan. The Government claimed the voice on the tapes was not Khan's. It was a cover-up of an illegal wiretap. The conversations had been leaked out from the city crime branch. Four private detectives were arrested for illegally obtaining phone records of former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh. But what if an illegally monitored phone yields evidence of wrongdoing? Officials say a backdated application is sought from the home secretary.
How They Are Tapped:
Every agency fills out an authorisation slip before placing a phone under surveillance. In the states, it is the state home secretary who signs this. Officially, telephones of politicians cannot be tapped-a qualifier on the slip says the surveilled person is not an elected representative.
In the first instance of surveillance, the then deputy superintendent of the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) got a telecom engineer in Allahabad to devise a type writer sized interception box. The box was lugged around and connected to switching stations.
Today, every cellular service provider has an aggregation station which is a clutch of servers called mediation servers (because they mediate between the cellular operators and the law enforcement agencies) to intercept phones. Two kinds of interception facilities are available-Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and the leased line. Under ISDN, a mediation server intercepts a call, and then transmits it through a Primary Rate Interface (PRI) line to the office of a government agency. The police can listen to the phone on their PRI line and store the recording to attached computers. Simultaneously, a sound file of the intercepted call is also recorded and stored in the mediation server. In ISDN, the transfer of call-related data doesn't happen in real time. A slow 64 KBPS speed results in a time lag of two to three minutes. Data packets are lost in traffic and calls don't reach the PRI line.
Under the leased line facility, the service provider gives the agency direct access to its backbone network through a dedicated fast speed fibre optic cable connection. The call-related data is not only transmitted in real time, at the lightning speed of 2 MBPS, the chances of missing any call are minimal. But since the cost of laying a fast-speed fibre optic cable connection is higher, state agencies are more dependent on ISDN. For instance, the Mumbai Crime Branch has leased line connections from just three service providers, for the rest it uses ISDN. At any given point of time a service provider can provide a maximum of eight agencies the call interception facility to a given number.
The commonest surveillance methods are sourcing an individual's call data records (CDR) or list of numbers dialled and received. This does not require government sanction. Fed into a special software, the CDR rapidly builds up a 'relationship tree' or charts the relationship between thousands of calls. This can easily be used to pry on civilians. A secretary in a Central ministry is believed to source the CDRs of journalists to trace their sources.
Trying To Beat The Tap Trap:
Technology is an antidote to privacy. The rich and the famous do try and escape it. In one of her taped conversations, Niira Radia instructs Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi's wife Rajathi's charted accountant to call on her Tata Docomo number. Since lawful intercept of a cellphone can only be done by writing to the concerned telecom service provider, Radia evidently felt secure on a number provided by her client, Tata.
Not surprisingly, Radia's Idea and MTNL numbers only were intercepted. Anil Ambani's aide Tony Jesudasan uses only Reliance cellphone numbers. Sources say both the IT Department and CBI wanted to tap Jesudasan's number but decided against it for obvious reasons. Singh had a friend in Vodafone's senior management who warned him of all his four numbers being monitored by the Delhi Police, thus giving him time to destroy incriminating evidence.
There is a twist in this tale. A majority of surveillance equipment was acquired to keep track of organised crime and terrorism. Intelligence agencies rue that phone tapping and interceptions are now yielding diminishing returns because terrorists have found new ways of staying ahead of them. Terrorists are increasingly using BlackBerry phones while their handlers are using the new generation Inmarsat-4 satellite phones, making their interception next to impossible, at least for now.
Though Inmarsat-4 phones can be monitored off the air, the conversation is available only in encrypted format. Voice and data can be effectively monitored only at the Inmarsat-4 switch in London and New York, where it is available in decrypted form. That is the reason why India still has to depend upon British or US intelligence agencies for information. Voice over Internet Telephony (VOIP)-based Skype and Google mail and chat are also extensively used by terrorists, smalltime criminals and corporate houses. Free software can be downloaded on smart handsets and computers to encrypt calls and mails.
Commercially available software like Cellcrypt has been found to be most effective in securing conversations and messages. Compatible with all smartphones, Cellcrypt aids in personalised encryption of all communication. The only catch for completely secure communication is that handsets at both ends should have the software. If only one of the handsets has installed the software, the communication will be available in decrypted format at the other end.
The Orwellian Future-active Intervention:
Imagine this scenario. Terrorist A sends SMS’s from Malad in Mumbai to terrorists B in Colaba and C in Bandra. The SMS asks B and C to meet at Juhu beach, at 6 p.m. As B and C are moving, it becomes difficult to nab them by their cellphone location. The police alter the SMS from A and send an SMS saying "meet at Kalaghoda at 5 p.m." to B and "meet at Regal Cinema at 6 p.m." to C. B and C, believing that the SMS was from A, respond accordingly. The police nab all three in a smooth operation. Most anti-terror agencies can actually carry out such operations. Active off-air interception allows the police to virtually act as cellphone towers and thus modify or block SMS’s and calls. The machine can be vehicle-mounted and can follow the target in urban areas where conventional surveillance fails to track moving suspects. Security agencies say they have elaborate internal regulations to control the use of this technology.
In Mumbai, for instance, the Crime Branch needs written authorisation from the police commissioner to use this machine. However, the temptation to misuse it for political espionage and personal gains is high. Conscious of its potential for misuse, the Uttar Pradesh ATS has recently declined to acquire this tool. There is no guarantee that others will display such resolve.
One of the Indian Top persons Mobiles are trapped like Big Company Owners, Top Cricketers, Politicians, Real Estate Owners and other Indian Top Most VIP and VVIP personals phones are tapped. Because If any one terrorist or murderer called them catch them immediately this is the main reasons and profit from mobile trappings.
Mobile Trapping means when you are calling to your friend or relatives, if your mobile is trapped from Indian Security Agencies (CBI, Police, CID, Military, ATS etc.,) they can listen the your complete call.
Over a million Indian mobile phone users, across service providers, are under the surveillance of Central agencies in India through the year. Officially, the Government will admit to over 6,000 telephones in New Delhi being tapped. This secret hot list has as many as 400 bureaucrats and military officials monitored on suspicion of corruption, 200 corporate honchos, over 50 top journalists, an equal number of fixers, a dozens of arms dealers, two dozen NGOs and about 100 high society pimps, drug dealers and hawala operators and contract killers. This is in addition to suspected militants, their supporters and sympathisers and known criminals.
In United States of America all mobile users mobiles under surveillance or trapped. All mobile customers mobile calls trapped. From this trapping system if you are said a word like BOMB or MURDER or DRUGS it will be automatically shown to officers to your all details along with your track records and your present movements. From this system crime will be deducting automatically.
In India an attempt to widen its surveillance net, the Home Ministry has now sought suitable amendments to the Indian Telegraph Act in 1885, to allow active intervention for tapping phones and monitoring Internet communication. Home Secretary G.K. Pillai says the home ministry is pursuing changes to the country's telecom laws to bring clarity in the Government's authority to intercept highly secure corporate communications. This will be part of broader changes related to lawful intercept policy and privacy.
Everyday, the sole authoriser of such Central wiretaps, receives hundreds of fresh written requests for electronic surveillance. A majority of requests emanate from the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Income Tax Department, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in India.
Additional requests also come from state agencies who need the home ministry's permission to intercept phones in Union Territories. Law enforcement agencies can tap a phone without the home secretary's permission for the first week. Thereafter, a tap can be done only after a strong case is made. In reality, a weak argument works. Crime and terrorism are the familiar rationales but they leave the door open for multi-level abuse. Each state has an average of 2,000 to 3,000 phones under surveillance at any given time.
Phone tapping is uncoordinated. Various agencies monitor numbers in silos. At times, a single number is simultaneously being monitored by multiple agencies of the state and Centre. The proliferation of off-the-shelf sophisticated listening devices and absence of a Central database compound the problem. Except in certain special laws, wiretaps can be used only as corroborative evidence in courts. But it is so easily done with such little effort that it becomes the first recourse for law enforcement authorities. With an increasing reliance on phone tapping as operational tools, the surveillance society is only set for consolidation.
In United States of America like system where only a judge authorises wiretaps after reviewing the evidence. "Civil liberties are far too important to be left to the executive or the home secretary. There is every danger of wrong permissions being given out, resulting in indiscriminate tapping," says former chief justice of India.
What The Law Says for mobile trapping :
Phone tapping is allowed under the general provisions of Section 5 of the Indian Telegraph Act, but only in "public emergency, or in the interest of public safety". In 1997, the Supreme Court, in response to a petition filed by justice Sachar, laid down five precepts for intercepting conversations-in the interests of national sovereignty and integrity, state security, friendly relations with foreign states, public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of an offence. "Tapping phones especially for tax evasion and corruption needs to be done only in the rarest of rare cases," says former IPS officer.
There are seven Central agencies authorised to tap the telephones - the IB, ED, Delhi Police, CBI, DRI, Central Economic Intelligence Bureau and the Narcotics Control Bureau in India. "Phone tapping is a legal instrument. It should be kept in safe custody of the court or very few officers should have access to it. Leaking tapes are like leaking official secrets; it not only adversely affects an individual but is also harmful to investigations and the prosecution process".
Who Is Being Tapped:
Often a hint of suspicion can put you under the scanner. Home ministry officials became suspicious of the flamboyant lifestyle of IAS officer. The bureaucrat shunned his official accommodation in favour of a plush guesthouse provided by his friend and co-accused. Phones were kept under observation where he was heard referring to "Ukranian and Russian software", a code for prostitutes. Hotels were referred to as hardware and bribes were called laddoos.
He was charged with giving clearance to a US-based telecom company, Telecordia, for mobile number portability. Dozens of other bureaucrats are believed to be under surveillance for similar reasons. But for every legal case, there are hundreds of illegal wire taps. Five years ago, a Mumbai newspaper publicised explicit phone conversations of actor Salman Khan. The Government claimed the voice on the tapes was not Khan's. It was a cover-up of an illegal wiretap. The conversations had been leaked out from the city crime branch. Four private detectives were arrested for illegally obtaining phone records of former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh. But what if an illegally monitored phone yields evidence of wrongdoing? Officials say a backdated application is sought from the home secretary.
How They Are Tapped:
Every agency fills out an authorisation slip before placing a phone under surveillance. In the states, it is the state home secretary who signs this. Officially, telephones of politicians cannot be tapped-a qualifier on the slip says the surveilled person is not an elected representative.
In the first instance of surveillance, the then deputy superintendent of the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) got a telecom engineer in Allahabad to devise a type writer sized interception box. The box was lugged around and connected to switching stations.
Today, every cellular service provider has an aggregation station which is a clutch of servers called mediation servers (because they mediate between the cellular operators and the law enforcement agencies) to intercept phones. Two kinds of interception facilities are available-Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and the leased line. Under ISDN, a mediation server intercepts a call, and then transmits it through a Primary Rate Interface (PRI) line to the office of a government agency. The police can listen to the phone on their PRI line and store the recording to attached computers. Simultaneously, a sound file of the intercepted call is also recorded and stored in the mediation server. In ISDN, the transfer of call-related data doesn't happen in real time. A slow 64 KBPS speed results in a time lag of two to three minutes. Data packets are lost in traffic and calls don't reach the PRI line.
Under the leased line facility, the service provider gives the agency direct access to its backbone network through a dedicated fast speed fibre optic cable connection. The call-related data is not only transmitted in real time, at the lightning speed of 2 MBPS, the chances of missing any call are minimal. But since the cost of laying a fast-speed fibre optic cable connection is higher, state agencies are more dependent on ISDN. For instance, the Mumbai Crime Branch has leased line connections from just three service providers, for the rest it uses ISDN. At any given point of time a service provider can provide a maximum of eight agencies the call interception facility to a given number.
The commonest surveillance methods are sourcing an individual's call data records (CDR) or list of numbers dialled and received. This does not require government sanction. Fed into a special software, the CDR rapidly builds up a 'relationship tree' or charts the relationship between thousands of calls. This can easily be used to pry on civilians. A secretary in a Central ministry is believed to source the CDRs of journalists to trace their sources.
Trying To Beat The Tap Trap:
Technology is an antidote to privacy. The rich and the famous do try and escape it. In one of her taped conversations, Niira Radia instructs Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi's wife Rajathi's charted accountant to call on her Tata Docomo number. Since lawful intercept of a cellphone can only be done by writing to the concerned telecom service provider, Radia evidently felt secure on a number provided by her client, Tata.
Not surprisingly, Radia's Idea and MTNL numbers only were intercepted. Anil Ambani's aide Tony Jesudasan uses only Reliance cellphone numbers. Sources say both the IT Department and CBI wanted to tap Jesudasan's number but decided against it for obvious reasons. Singh had a friend in Vodafone's senior management who warned him of all his four numbers being monitored by the Delhi Police, thus giving him time to destroy incriminating evidence.
There is a twist in this tale. A majority of surveillance equipment was acquired to keep track of organised crime and terrorism. Intelligence agencies rue that phone tapping and interceptions are now yielding diminishing returns because terrorists have found new ways of staying ahead of them. Terrorists are increasingly using BlackBerry phones while their handlers are using the new generation Inmarsat-4 satellite phones, making their interception next to impossible, at least for now.
Though Inmarsat-4 phones can be monitored off the air, the conversation is available only in encrypted format. Voice and data can be effectively monitored only at the Inmarsat-4 switch in London and New York, where it is available in decrypted form. That is the reason why India still has to depend upon British or US intelligence agencies for information. Voice over Internet Telephony (VOIP)-based Skype and Google mail and chat are also extensively used by terrorists, smalltime criminals and corporate houses. Free software can be downloaded on smart handsets and computers to encrypt calls and mails.
Commercially available software like Cellcrypt has been found to be most effective in securing conversations and messages. Compatible with all smartphones, Cellcrypt aids in personalised encryption of all communication. The only catch for completely secure communication is that handsets at both ends should have the software. If only one of the handsets has installed the software, the communication will be available in decrypted format at the other end.
The Orwellian Future-active Intervention:
Imagine this scenario. Terrorist A sends SMS’s from Malad in Mumbai to terrorists B in Colaba and C in Bandra. The SMS asks B and C to meet at Juhu beach, at 6 p.m. As B and C are moving, it becomes difficult to nab them by their cellphone location. The police alter the SMS from A and send an SMS saying "meet at Kalaghoda at 5 p.m." to B and "meet at Regal Cinema at 6 p.m." to C. B and C, believing that the SMS was from A, respond accordingly. The police nab all three in a smooth operation. Most anti-terror agencies can actually carry out such operations. Active off-air interception allows the police to virtually act as cellphone towers and thus modify or block SMS’s and calls. The machine can be vehicle-mounted and can follow the target in urban areas where conventional surveillance fails to track moving suspects. Security agencies say they have elaborate internal regulations to control the use of this technology.
In Mumbai, for instance, the Crime Branch needs written authorisation from the police commissioner to use this machine. However, the temptation to misuse it for political espionage and personal gains is high. Conscious of its potential for misuse, the Uttar Pradesh ATS has recently declined to acquire this tool. There is no guarantee that others will display such resolve.
One of the Indian Top persons Mobiles are trapped like Big Company Owners, Top Cricketers, Politicians, Real Estate Owners and other Indian Top Most VIP and VVIP personals phones are tapped. Because If any one terrorist or murderer called them catch them immediately this is the main reasons and profit from mobile trappings.
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