Telephone recording laws are laws that govern the civilian recording of telephone conversations by the participants (as opposed to laws controlling government or law enforcement wiretapping).
Telephone tapping is officially strictly controlled in many countries to safeguard an individual’s privacy; this is the case in all developeddemocracies. In theory, telephone tapping often needs to be authorised by a court, and is, again in theory, normally only approved whenevidence shows it is not possible to detect criminal or subversive activity in less intrusive ways; often the law and regulations require that the crime investigated must be at least of a certain severity. In many jurisdictions however, permission for telephone tapping is easily obtained on a routine basis without further investigation by the court or other entity granting such permission. Illegal or unauthorised telephone tapping is often a criminal offence. However, in certain jurisdictions such as Germany, courts will accept illegally recorded phone calls without the other party’s consent as evidence.
In India, telephone tapping has to be approved by a designated authority. It is illegal otherwise. [4]
The Central Government or State Government is empowered to order interception of messages per section 5 of Indian Telegraph Act 1885 [5]. Rule 419 and 419A sets out the procedure of interception and monitoring of telephone messages. There is a provision for a review committee to supervise the order of interception. Phone tapping is permitted based on Court order only and such permission is granted only if it is required to prevent a major offence involving national security or to gather intelligence on anti-national/terrorist activities. Though economic offences/tax evasion were initially covered under the reasons for interception of phones, the same was withdrawn in 1999 by the Government based on a Supreme Court order citing protection to privacy of the individual.
As per Rule 428 of the India telegraphic rules, no person without the sanction of the telegraph authority, use any telephone or cause or suffer it to be used, purposes other than the establishment of local or trunk calls.
The Government of India instructions provide for approved attachments. There is no provision for attachment for recording conversation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws
Some startling figures tumbled out on rampant phone tapping in the country when telecom service provider Reliance Communications told the Supreme Court on Monday that the authorities had asked it to tap 1.51 lakh phone numbers in a five-year span between 2006 and 2010.
This works out to an average of over 30,000 telephone interceptions every year by a single service provider on the orders of various law enforcing agencies. Or, over 82 telephones were intercepted every day by a single service provider.
Reliance is the second-largest service provider with a subscriber base of 12.57 crore as in 2010. The biggest service provider, Bharti Airtel, had 15.25 crore subscribers in 2010, while Vodafone’s subscriber base was just a shade lower than Reliance’s at 12.43 crore. State-owned BSNL came fourth with 8.67 crore subscribers.
If Reliance’s ratio of phones tapped to the number of its subscribers were to be taken as representative and applied to other service providers, it is a fair assumption that government agencies were tapping more than one lakh phones every year.
In Delhi alone, Reliance tapped a total of 3,588 phones in 2005 when the teledensity was low compared to today. It also included Amar Singh’s number which was put under surveillance —
Over 1 lakh phones are tapped every year – The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Over-1-lakh-phones-are-tapped-every-year/articleshow/7498154.cms#ixzz1E1w6e8Lc
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