NEW DELHI – India’s intelligence agency wants internet service providers (ISPs) to keep a record of all online activities of customers for a minimum of six months, a local newspaper reported on Thursday.
In a communication to the Department of Telecom, India’s Intelligence Bureau has sought that addresses of websites visited with date and time and financial transactions of all customers be stored by the internet operators for six months, the Times of India newspaper reported.
If implemented, the move may pose a threat to online privacy as internet service providers such as Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, BSNL and MTNL will now become custodians of online records of Indian citizens. In India, mobile phone companies and internet providers do not keep online logs that track the web usage pattern of their customers.
The paper reported that these companies and the internet providers selectively monitor online activities of only those customers as required by the intelligence agencies. The Telecom Ministry said that the proposal can be examined and implemented only after India’s indigenously-built Centralised Monitoring System (CMS) becomes functional.
The CMS can track all communication traffic – wireless and fixed line, satellite, internet, e-mails and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) calls -and gather intelligence inputs. The system, modeled on similar set-ups in several Western countries, aims to be a one-stop solution as against the current practice of running several decentralised monitoring agencies under various ministries.
Planning for the CMS, which was aimed at strengthening India’s internal security apparatus, began in 2007, but the project was put on a fast track after the Mumbai attacks, when gunmen received orders via internet telephony (VoIP).
