Pegasus: Government says they 'destroy' the interception records 'regularly'
Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas, who earlier moved the Supreme Court on the Pegasus snooping issue, filed a question for the Ministry of Communication in which he sought details of “number of persons whose telephones were intercepted from 2016 till today.”
The communications ministry has said that the government has no records of telephone interceptions since these are “destroyed regularly”, a disclosure that comes at a time when opposition leaders have been seeking answers from the government over allegations that Indians were targeted with a mobile spyware known as Pegasus.
Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas, who earlier moved the Supreme Court on the Pegasus snooping issue, filed a question for the Ministry of Communication in which he sought details of “number of persons whose telephones were intercepted from 2016 till today.”
Brittas also asked the government whether Indian telegraph act “facilitated the telephone interception of individuals by the government” and in case it was factual, he had sought the “year-wise details” about these interception attempts by the government.
Responding to Brittas, minister of state for communications Devusinh Chauhan had said that “such records are not maintained” by the government as they are “destroyed regularly” as required by the law.
“As informed by Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the records pertaining to lawful interception are destroyed regularly as per provisions contained in Sub-rule 18 of Rule 419A of the Indian Telegraph (1st Amendment of 2014) Rules, 2014 and Sub-rule 23 of Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Interception, Monitoring, and Decryption of Information) Rules, 2009. Such records are not being maintained by MHA,” the minister told Brittas.
A Gazette notification dated February 4, 2014 suggests an amendment to the Indian Telegraph Act with the subrule 14 under the above-mentioned notification in the Gazette saying: “Records pertaining to such directions for interception and of intercepted messages shall be destroyed by the relevant competent authority and the authorised security and law enforcement Agencies, every six months unless these are, or likely to be, required for the functional requirement.”
The minister also added that there were provisions for the government as per Indian Telegraph Act’s Section 5(2) and Information Technology Act’s Section 69 to intercept phones “lawfully.”
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