Nira Radia and Phone Tapping

Dear PM,

The latest addition to already long list of scams is phone tapping scam. Can government indiscriminately tap phone? Would UPA/NDA ever tap phone of Sonia or Rahul/Advani or Vajpayee? Let’s discuss the phone tapping more objectively.

1. Phone tapping is intrusion to privacy. There cannot be two views about it.
2. In an extraordinary situation phone tapping may be permissible. This raises many questions –

• What are those extra ordinary situations?
• Who will authorize phone tapping?
• Who will actually tap the phone – ministry or investigating agency?
• How the tapped information be protected from being leaked?
• Who will listen to the tapped conversation – ministry or investigating agency?
• What will happen to the tapped conversation if found to be irrelevant. Will it be destroyed?
• When order is given by a competent person to tap the phone would the identity of the person whose phone will be tapped be revealed to the person tapping or listening to the conversation?
• When will the tapped conversation be given to media – during investigation or after filing the charge sheet?
• Will there be any exclusion list i.e. president, vice president and PM?

Important thing is that government must have a clear policy and procedure for phone tapping. Extreme care should be taken to protect the identity of the tapped person. Ministry or investigating agency cannot take arbitrary decision to tap phone. Approval for tapping must come from PM or home ministry and there must be a strong reason to do so.

Tapped conversation should be fully encrypted and only assigned person can listen to the tapes. If the tapes are leaked assigned person should be held responsible. The person who will be listening the taped conversion should not hear the real voice to protect the identity. Voice must be masked. If anything objectionable is found, it should be notified to home ministry and conversation should be forwarded to the investigating officer. Identity of the tapped person should be revealed only if he is charge sheeted. Finally phone tapping should be limited to the following situations

• To prevent loss of life i.e. phone of a suspected terrorist, murderer, rapist can be tapped
• To protect sovereignty of the country

Tapping of phone to prevent corruption is simply unacceptable. Allegedly I-T department was investigating Nira for I-T violations. CBDT tapped 5000 calls and only 120 calls are selectively leaked. This is done deliberately with an evil intention.  This is not only intrusion to the privacy of Nira but also to the privacy of those Nira was talking to. Government cannot do it. It is as big scam as Watergate in US. Government should destroy all Nira Radia tapes.

Written to PM on 30-Nov-10