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Ministry of Home Affairs has invited bids for setting up Communications Monitoring facility at all the State capitals, on turnkey basis.
Communications Monitoring facility will be setup at all the State capitals with facilities to monitor Voice Calls, SMS & MMS, GPRS and FAX communications on Landlines (PSTN), CDMA and GSM networks. The system across all the States will be compatible and interoperable.
Telephone Call Interception System (TCIS) will be setup for each of the service providers who has been licensed for the State to legally monitor the calls as and when required. 30 (thirty) locations are identified across India i.e in each state/UT headquarter. The Intelligence Bureau has taken up this project under the scheme of modernisation of the Special Branches of the States.
TCIS can not only listen to phone conversation, but can also track down precise location on a map and match voice with known suspects before the call is complete. The system, to be set up by next April, will also be able to analyse the calling pattern of a target to identify correlated calls and record the locations of all mobile devices.
It will also have the capability to integrate the data on a digital map including satellite imagery and software — that can analyse millions of calls and their locations and spot the possible hideouts being used by a suspect. An integrated voice recognition system will enable intelligence officers to identify the voices of people the target is talking to.
The Centre is going to spend a about Rs 450 crore to set up the standardised interception facilities in Delhi and all the state capitals.
Present systems in some of the states lack of interoperability that prevents a set of information from one system being read by another; it has been a major challenge in setting up India’s national intelligence grid. Also recently some instances indicated leakage of recorded conversations, wider access and lack of traceability leads to misuse of facility by the staff.
Once the new system is in place, sources said, it would make unauthorised access to any intercepted communication or records virtually impossible. Two factor authentication (Biometric/Retina/Access Cards besides Passwords) will be implemented for granting access to the system. Real-time monitoring of the tapping being done by the service providers will enable the states to ensure no illegal tapping is being done based on any fake permission.