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Collaborate for Security

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VoicenData Bureau
New Update

As responsible citizens of the world, we are all equal stakeholders in the

society. It is our duty, therefore, to do our bit towards building a healthier

and fearless society.

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Terrorism and organized crime are the nemesis of today’s world. Terrorists

exchange information to organize, plan, coordinate and execute their activities.

Security agencies need to tap this information to take pre-emptive action and

prevent terrorists from causing damage and loss to property and lives of the

innocent people.

Lawful interception plays a crucial role in helping law enforcement agencies

to combat against criminal activity by monitoring and intercepting communication

between terrorist groups. While this has become a top priority globally after

the incident of September 11, certain countries like Israel, India, and the US,

that are prime targets of the militants, need to take more steps and be even

more alert.

Although there are different standards for lawful interception, like CALEA

(in the US) and ETSI (in Europe), security agencies in every country have

different expectations and telecommunication service providers in each country

have to build systems to meet the country’s legislations. However, there are

certain genuine issues that service providers face while helping the security

agencies in their mission to track terrorist activities.

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A lot of information exchange happens through e-mails, Net telephony and VoIP over dedicated leased lines that bypass PSTN switches

Jagbir singh

The first and foremost issue is of lack of clarity in the exact requirements

of lawful interception. This, coupled with unavailability of right solutions,

has already delayed service rollouts of several NLD/ILD service providers.

Unless and until the requirements are frozen, the right solution cannot even be

thought of, let alone being developed.

The whole thing was much simpler earlier before Internet became prevalent,

when only voice calls were intercepted. This process was as follows:

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  • Security agencies provided the telecom service provider details of the

    phone number or group of numbers that had to be intercepted
  • The service provider programmed the switch to monitor those number(s)
  • Whenever a call was made from or to that number, the service provider

    would connect to the security agencies who could hear it live or/and record

    it as well

In the modern Internet world, this becomes very complex, where lot of

information exchange happens through e-mails , Internet telephony and VoIP over

dedicated leased lines that directly connect to the Internet cloud, bypassing

the PSTN switches.

In India, the current scenario of lawful interception is quite fluid due to

the following reasons:

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  • Security requirements and solutions for TDM voice services are reasonably

    in place. However, for newer services like VoIP over IPLCs, there are no

    standard specifications defined for lawful interception
  • Liberation of telecom market in India is seeing large number of new

    private SPs entering the scenario. Security agencies that earlier dealt with

    only BSNL/VSNL are now trying to play it safe and make the security

    specifications as exhaustive as possible
  • Security agencies are still finalizing their expectations from SPs

In developed countries, where similar solutions have been deployed, usually

the onus is on the security agencies to define the specifications and

requirements for lawful interception. In fact, there the security agencies are

the owners of the required monitoring systems and equipment and the respective

governments provide subsidies for this project, as it is a matter of the nation’s

security. The service provider is responsible only for providing access to the

network traffic by tapping information at the entry/exit point of the network.

This approach is followed in other countries based on two perspectives.

Confidentiality: Process and capability of monitoring remains fully

confidential with security agencies.

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Customized Solutions: The monitoring equipment are not available off

the shelf. They are highly customized solutions, which require extra development

efforts to meet the requirements and hence are very expensive.

Additional costs prevent SPs from lowering the tariffs and pass on the cost

benefit to end consumers. Perhaps a phase-wise approach can give service

providers sufficient time for implementation. But the key to successful

implementation lies in a collective approach–involving service providers and

security agencies.

The author is V-P (technology), Bharti Infotel

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