PrivacyIndia

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.

Industrialist Ratan Tata has questioned in the Supreme Court the lackadaisical attitude of the Centre in allowing free distribution and publication of his private conversations with lobbyist Nira Radia recorded by the Directorate General of Income Tax without taking any steps to retrieve the stored material or to find out the source of leakage. Mr. Tata, who filed a writ petition alleging that the publication of the tapes had infringed his right to privacy, in his supplementary affidavit said that the power of the law enforcement agencies to record telephone conversations itself "constitutes a serious encroachment upon the right of privacy guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution." He made it clear that the present petition was not designed to somehow keep back from publication any conversation to which he allegedly was a party for any oblique purpose. It was filed to seek redress of a wholesale violation of the constitutional rights of a large number of persons, including the petitioner and including a host of corporate entities by the indiscriminate publication of wiretrap material procured by questionable means.

o not be surprised if you are asked to furnish information under more than eight mandatory heads - demographic and biometric - when you go for registration under the Unique Identification (UID) number project in Himachal Pradesh. The state has tapped the UID project at its initial stage and combined it with its own food and civil supplies department project aimed for better delivery of services in future. Along with the eight mandatory questions under the UID project - name, residence, date of birth, photo, all 10 finger prints and iris image - the citizens will now also be asked to provide information about their status on ration cards, PAN cards, LPG connection and bank accounts. This additional information would be used exclusively by the state government for future planning and eliminating duplication in delivery of services by the food and civil supplies and consumer affairs department. The department is the nodal agency for monitoring the UID project in Himachal.

The Kerala Women's Commission has recommended to the State government to pass a resolution or to frame laws, if necessary, to make pre-marital HIV testing compulsory in the State. The Commission's recommendation, which has been listed prominently in its latest annual report, was forwarded to the government following a sample study conducted in the State in 2009-10, its chairperson D. Sreedevi said. "We have seen many cases where the women became infected with HIV after marriage. I have interacted with organisations working with HIV-positive people, where several women said that they were infected by their partners. There is no harm in ensuring that one is not HIV-positive before getting married," Ms. Sreedevi said.

"The officials have already collected the data relating to 33,316 fishermen in 66 villages after conducting an extensive survey in the 10 coastal mandals of the district for issue of tamper-proof ID cards using fingerprinting technology and pooling the information in a centralised database of the centre to better manage the internal security. The ID card comprising details like the name of the fisherman, parents' names, address, educational qualification, ration card number and voter ID card number, would be very be very useful particularly when fishermen were stranded in the high seas at times of natural calamities, he added. In all, 4,190 fishing boats were registered in the district so far as per the Centre's directive, he said."

The Central Information Commission was stumped when a woman sought its direction to the CBI on her peculiar complaint that the British secret service has planted a bug inside her and was tracking her movements. But the CIC dismissed the plea of the woman from Nagpur observing that her problem seems to be more medical than lack of information. The woman had approached Central Information Commission (CIC) for a direction to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to get details of this chip and involvement of the secret service.

In a bid to establish proper identity of slum dwellers in Capital City, Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) is planning to conduct a biometric survey of people residing in slums. "We have already completed slum profiling of 377 slums in Bhubaneswar. We are in process of finalising the proposed biometric survey of slum dwellers living in the city," said BDA Vice-Chairman D. K. Singh here on a sidelines of a seminar on Friday. "The decision to conduct biometric survey is aimed at having actual position (number) of urban poor residing in the city. The survey would ensure that no duplication of identity takes place," Mr. Singh said. He said in future it would also help administration check bogus beneficiaries of various government schemes.

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."

The government will soon issue guidelines to address security concerns over 3G video calls. "3G issue is almost resolved. Soon you will have new guidelines," communications and IT minister Kapil Sibal said. Yesterday, home minister P Chidambaram had said that telecom service providers neeed to work out the modalities to provide interception facilities to the security agencies, and only after that can the 3G mobile services be rolled out. The department of telecommunications (DoT) had asked Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications to stop commercial launch of 3G mobile services, including video calling facility. The law enforcement agencies were not able to intercept the video calls on a real time basis. The contents of video calls were displayed only after five minutes. The operators had offered to provide an interception solution in the next six months.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it clear that it cannot give direction to make DNA profiling mandatory in the country, for unidentified bodies. Instead it left the issue to the Centre, observing that it is for the government to explore whether magistrates can be empowered to order DNA profiling. The bench comprising Chief Justice S H Kapadia and Justices K S Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar said it cannot give any direction but asked the government to consider the issue if there's any possibility of asking magistrate courts to order such profiling, which will help families to claim unidentified bodies. "You file an affidavit whether a circular can be issued to state governments for asking magistrates to order DNA profiling of unidentified bodies," the Bench said as it asked Additional Solicitor General P P Malhotra to inform the court within four weeks. In an earlier hearing, on November 16, 2009, the bench was not keen on issuing notice to the Centre on a PIL filed by a Haryana-based doctor Shamsher Malik, who sought a direction to the government for making DNA profiling of unidentified bodies mandatory.

The Department of Posts has extended the validity of its 'Proof of Address' (PoA) cards from one year to three years for applications received on or after January 1, 2011. The department began issuing PoA cards in May 2010 as authenticated proof of address attested by the Post Masters of the respective areas. So far, it has issued 15,421 cards across the State against 34,592 applications sold. Applications are available at all post offices on payment of Rs.10. The filled-in application form along with two passport size photographs will have to be submitted at the post-office covering the area. Fee of Rs.240 will be charged for issuing a fresh card, while the same for renewal will be Rs.140. Duplicate cards can be obtained on payment of Rs.90.

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre and the Telecom Ministry on a petition for a direction to frame guidelines for telephone tapping without infringing on the right to privacy of citizens. A Bench of Justice G. S. Singhvi and Justice A. K. Ganguly issued notice on the public interest litigation petition filed by advocate Ravinder Kumar, seeking direction that interceptions which were purely private in nature should be kept out of the ambit of tapping. The Bench directed the matter to be tagged with the petition filed by industrialist Ratan Tata, which alleged that publication of his private conversations with corporate lobbyist Nira Radia tapes had infringed his right to privacy.

"The Indian Army will start DNA profiling of its soldiers this year for their identification in case of mutilation of bodies during an operation, attack or any kind of mishap. "We will begin DNA profiling of soldiers from this year as the profiling centre and data bank are almost ready," Lieutenant General Naresh Kumar, Commandant of Army Hospital Research and Referral, told PTI. Being set up at the Department of Forensic Medicine in Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, the centre will collect the blood samples of the troops who are involved in hazardous tasks, including fighting militancy, and store them in a DNA data bank. The DNA profiling centre is being established to help in identification of bodies mutilated beyond recognition. "Now that this centre and DNA data bank are almost ready to take off, we will be able to easily recognise the mutilated dead bodies that we get during war time, from an episode of avalanches or from blast sites." "

SRIKAKULAM: Department of Fisheries decided to complete process of enrolment of fishermen for the issue of biometric smart cards very soon in Srikakulam district. The department has so far collected photos, finger prints and signatures from 30,000 fishermen and remaining 20,000 will be covered in a phased manner. The department which introduced on-line system for the registration said there was good response from fishermen in the district. Biometric identity cards are compulsory to fishermen engaged in deep-sea fishing as part of beefing up coastal security. The identity card was going to be an important document for a fisherman, the officials said, adding that once the scheme was complete, Coast Guard personnel would not allow anyone to fish without the biometric identity card. The scheme for issuing biometric identity cards for fishermen in the State has been launched as part of a directive by the Ministry of Home Affairs' to keep vigil along the coasts in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai on November 26, 2008.