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"Scotland Yard on Thursday night admitted that almost 4,000 people may have had their phones hacked by the News of the World's private investigator, placing further strain on the testimony of senior officers to Parliament that there were only a handful of victims. In a statement, deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, indicated that the new investigation into the illegal eavesdropping of mobile phone messages was struggling to deal with the mass of evidence of wrongdoing contained in Glenn Mulcaire's notebooks."

With allegations of misuse as well as fears of breach of privacy mounting, authorities are working to ban phone tapping in cases of tax evasion, except when the matter may have a bearing on national security. Even in cases concerning national security, only Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) or Enforcement Directorate (ED) will do phone-tapping after additional scrutiny of its request is done in consultation with both home and finance ministries. CBDT, another agency under the finance ministry which is empowered to tap phones, is being taken off the list.

In a bid to check smuggling by air passengers of satellite phones, which could be a potential weapon for terrorist activities, the government has made it mandatory for inbound travellers to declare them. A new column has been inserted in the immigration or arrival card. The changes have been implemented following "increasing imports of satellite phones in passenger baggage" without obtaining authorisation, an official communication said. "The CBEC desires that the Commissioners in-charge of International Airports ensure that instructions are complied with and correct forms are used by the arriving passengers," a Central Board of Excise and Customs circular said.

Kolkata The recent order by the Criminal Investigation Department to its units to stop phone tapping as part of monitoring of crimes has caused a concern among a section of the CID investigators. It may be noted that when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took over the office, she had said that police tapped phones indiscriminately and that it had to stop. The CID order is seen as a follow up action, sources said.

The Supreme Court today said it will hold final hearing on a day-to-day basis from April 19 on Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata's plea to bar online portals and electronic media from airing his phone conversation with corporate lobbyist Nira Radia tapped by the income tax department. A bench of Justice GS Singhvi and Justice AK Ganguly will examine the issues raised by Tata including the questions of right to privacy and right to freedom of speech and expression as envisaged under the Constitution.

"LONDON: Britain's internal spy agency MI5 tapped innocent people's phone numbers in secret surveillance mix-up, according to a government report. Officers from the Security Service -- mainly concerned with the UK's internal security -- and Serious Organised Crime Agency mistakenly tapped the wrong telephones in as many as 30 cases, says the report. However, on grounds of national security, none of the victims have been identified or told their phones were wrongly intercepted, the 'Daily Mail' reported. "

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, obtained phone records of a whistleblower professor's conversations with journalists without his consent or the sanction of a court or investigative agencies, to charge the faculty member with violating service rules. IIT Kharagpur obtained call details of conversations between computer science professor Rajeev Kumar and journalists from two leading English dailies, drawing allegations of violation of both law and privacy. Other than a customer, only government probe agencies and courts - and not employers in general - can demand call details or records from telecom service providers in India. Service providers also swear to ensure customer privacy in their license agreement with the government.

NEW DELHI: The Intelligence Bureau (IB) wants all mobile phone companies to store call data records, or details of all phone calls made by their customers, for a period of five years-a move that is set to be vehemently opposed by companies citing operational costs. At present, telcos store call records only for six months. This marks the second time in the recent months that the IB has asked the telecom ministry to increase the tenure of storing communication details of customers.

As the government tries to put a legal framework in place for phone-tapping, a 126-year-old law has come to its rescue. Sources in the law ministry say, thanks to a provision in the Indian Telegraph Act 1885 that allows government in public interest to intercept messages, a new law may not be required at all. However, a directive - instead of a new law - may not take care of some of issues on tapping that have constantly been raised by experts. For instance, India is one the few countries, where tapping can be carried out without a court warrant.

Cyber Crime police on Friday evening arrested an internet hacker, Vangalapudi Vijaya Kumar, 23, for swindling Rs 30,600 from an HDFC Bank customer. Vijaya Kumar, a resident of Boduppal and a native of Krishna district, secured the internet banking user name and password of a cyber cafe visitor. He used the details to purchase online a mobile phone (Nokia N-97) worth Rs 30,600 on December 3. On December 8, he sold the mobile instrument for Rs 20,000 to one Shahnawaz Zubair, a mobile vender at Jagdish Market, Abids. Through the IMEI number of the phone, the duo were traced and arrested, an official press release said.

Amid a debate over phone-tapping and making conversations public without authorisation, the Telecom Ministry has proposed a penalty of up to Rs 2 crore on unlawfully tapping, as against the prevailing Rs 500. In a communique to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), the Department of Telecom (DoT) has proposed a penalty between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 2 crore for breaches under different sections of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885. For breaching Section 26 of the Act, which prohibits telegraph officers or other officials from making away with or altering, unlawfully intercepting or disclosing messages, or divulging the purport of signals, maximum penalty has been proposed.

In the season of phonetaps, comes a startling admission by the Enforcement Directorate that while probing charges of money laundering, it intercepted phone conversations between members of the Singhania group, that runs Kanpur-based LML, and their lawyers. The tap was done just days before a court order was due in the case. The recorded conversations, said ED's counsel additional solicitor general Harin Rawal, raise questions regarding the Allahabad High Court order that stayed the ED probe. In their order, on June 9 last year, a vacation bench of Justice Rakesh Sharma and Justice Shyam Shankar Tiwari had called the ED's investigation "wholly without jurisdiction and contrary to the mandate of FEMA (Foreign Exchange Management Act)". In the first of his two opinions, on June 21, 2010 - which form the basis of the government's Special Leave Petition filed in the Supreme Court last September challenging the HC stay - Rawal said: "To put it briefly, a couple of days prior to the interim order being rendered by the Honourable Division Bench, a conversation is recorded that would clearly be a reasonable basis to believe that the Honourable Division Bench has passed an interim order on considerations which are other than legal or judicial."

In a six-month period - from August 31, 2009, to February 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin. Spitz has provided a rare glimpse - an unprecedented one, privacy experts say - of what is being collected as we walk around with our phones. Unlike many online services and websites that must send "cookies" to a user's computer to try to link its traffic to a specific person, cellphone companies simply have to sit back and hit "record"

For those agitated over the big brother snooping on their lives, there is more bad news in store as India's external intelligence agency, the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) has been notified by the UPA government as an "authorised agen-cy" to legally intercept phone calls, e-mails and all forms of data, voice and electronic communications with immediate effect. This is the first time in R&AW's history since its inception in 1967 that it has been allowed to snoop on Indian citizens in addition to its espionage activities abroad.

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police is in the process of acquiring its own internet monitoring system, capable of directly accessing emails, chats and other web content posted by a suspect as well as tapping into net communications through mobile phones. The new interception system would be a parallel tapping mechanism, doing away with the need to approach an Internet service provider for access to specific email and other content, as is the case at present.

The Commissionerate Task Force police on Tuesday arrested 13 persons and seized nine computers and a laptop from them on the charge that they were downloading obscene content and circulating them among the youth. According to Deputy Commissioner of Police M. Ravindranath Babu, the task force police team comprising Inspector K. Govindaraju and Sub-Inspector U. Rama Rao conducted raids on internet centres and cell points at Prakashnagar, Governorpet, Moghalrajapuram and Krishna Lanka areas on receiving complaints from local people. All the arrested persons were circulating the obscene content in chips used in mobile phones and computers.

CHENNAI: Ahead of full-fledged 3G services coupled with Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in Tamil Nadu, the Chennai Police are working with telecom companies here to analyse the challenges these services could throw up, particularly cyber crimes. While insisting on a foolproof mechanism to ensure genuineness of the address/documents of subscribers as per TRAI guidelines, the police have asked mobile phone service providers to focus more on pre-paid numbers. A fortnight ago, Additional Commissioner of Police (Headquarters) Sanjay Arora held discussions with representatives of 10 service providers in this regard, police sources said. On the instructions of Police Commissioner T. Rajendran, senior officers, including those handling cyber crimes in the Central Crime Branch, held a brainstorming session with experts on Tuesday.

"Worried about the negative impact of the leakage of intercepted conversations, the Centre has begun working on codifying privacy laws in the country. The new law will frame rules for monitoring phone and the Internet and for providing a redressal mechanism in case of breach of privacy. "

NEW DELHI: Responding to concerns about breach of privacy due to intercepted phone calls being made public, government told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that it has taken steps to devise ways to destroy taped conversations that are private

Law enforcement agencies can tap anyone's phone for security/operational reasons for 72 hours even without getting permission from the Union home secretary or principal secretary (home) of states. An inspector general-rank officer can give orders to do so. But if they don't get a nod from the top on the fourth day, they will have to destroy the call records within 48 hours of getting the response from the designated authority.