NEW DELHI: Not long ago, government agencies were tapping phones on a big scale, and service providers were not sufficiently vigilant against the misuse of authorization to tap at their end.The disturbing fact emerged during a hearing in Supreme Court on Wednesday in the case concerning the illegal tapping of former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh's phones.
The court was told before 2006, when new interception norms came into force, the government had ordered phone tapping of a large number of people.
The Supreme Court asked the government why service providers kept a dedicated person to receive orders for tapping from probe agencies. "Were such orders being issued regularly," asked a Bench of Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly. Reliance Infocomm's counsel C A Sundaram responded: "On some days, there were as many as 100 interception orders," he said.
Solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam said between September 2005 and February 2006, the Union government (UPA-I) had approved 419 interception orders and rejected 15 requests. He said service providers had reported 323 interception requests of which 245 were approved by the Delhi government.