In order to step up efforts to monitor the communications of militant groups, the ministry of communications (MoC), in a recent circular dated November 20, 1997, has asked paging operators to retain data of all communications for a period of one year.
The circular comes in the wake of a spurt in subversive activities of the United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa) and also at a time when inter-city paging services between Guwahati and Calcutta, now available for a month, is catching up as an effective low cost means of communication.
Currently users in Calcutta and Guwahati can page messages at the cost of local calls.
The circular has notified all the 27 paging companies in the country to maintain storage of commercial records as per clause 1.8 on a monthly cycle and further adds that all texts of the messages be destroyed only after a year subject to government requisition.
Copies of the circular have been sent to the cabinet secretary, director Central Bureau of Investigation, director general Revenue Intellingence, director general Economic Intelligence Bureau, the Intelligence Bureau, Enforcement Directorate and director general of Narcotics Controlling Bureau.
The circular will add teeth to the department of telecommunications (DoT) cell for monitoring radio communications in the country. The Assam government, which is plagued by insurgency will benefit from the move as all incoming and outgoing messages of militant outfits in Guwahati using radio paging will be on record.
It may be recalled that Modi Korea Telecom Ltd (MLTK) paging service, Modi Page, last month flagged off its first inter-city paging network linking Calcutta and Guwahati in collaboration with Nice Paging. DoT has allotted Modi Page and Nice the same radio frequency (1.51 M Hz).
However, the messages of certain outfits cannot fully be monitored since the numeric pagers can be effectively used for paging short coded messages from one city to another.
Currently, most of the government departments lack the requisite infrastructure, that is, the hardware and software, to link up with cellular operators to have 24-hour access to all cellular phone communications.
Insurgency prompts govt to step up radio monitoring.
