The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on Thursday warned telecom companies and private detective agencies against indulging in any kind of unauthorised interception of telephone calls, saying that those caught will be booked and punished as per the provisions of the Indian Telegraph Act.
“It has come to the notice that some persons, companies, including Public Sector Undertakings, private vendors and private detective agencies are establishing, maintaining or operating unauthorised communications network, including wireless network for unauthorised monitoring, intercepting and surveillance of communications, and some times are importing these equipment for demonstration purpose to Law Enforcing Agencies for short duration,” DoT said in a statement.
“Such type of acts violates the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 and Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933 and persons or companies involved in such types of acts are liable to punishment as per provision of Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 and Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933,” it added. This Act gives powers to the government to seize the equipment and also carries a maximum punishment of three-year imprisonment.
privacy india on 16 Nov 11IT is 30 years since a Congress Member of Parliament, V.N. Gadgil, suggested an Act for the protection of privacy, designed, no doubt, to curb press exposure of the wrongdoings of politicians. In reality, it is all but impossible to draft a statute that strikes a fair balance between people's right to know and the protection of a person's privacy. In India, as in the United Kingdom, there is no tort of privacy. India's law of torts (that is, civil wrongs punishable in damages) is based on case law, English and foreign. However, the Supreme Court of India has inferred right to privacy from the ones explicitly guaranteed. Article 21 of the Constitution contains a guarantee of personal liberty and it is obvious that personal liberty also involves the right to privacy.
