Govt to amend law to check misuse of VoIP by terror groups

Govt plans to amend the 128-year-old Indian Telegraph Act in a bid to check misuse of Internet Telephony, a tool that has become handy for terror and separatist groups.

New Delhi: Government plans to amend the 128-year-old Indian Telegraph Act in a bid to check misuse of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or Internet Telephony, a tool that has become handy for terror and separatist groups. Chairing a high-level meeting, Union Home Secretary R K Singh asked representatives of his ministry and from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Department of Information Technology (DIT) to work on a proposal for amendment of the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 and Information Technology Act, 2000.

This amendment shall ensure that all service providers who provide communication services in India through VoIP are mandated to be registered in India, according to the minutes of the meeting. These VoIP service providers will be asked to relocate their servers in the country and will be subjected to Indian laws, the documents said. VoIP has off late become handy for terror groups where messages are exchanged using this service on smart phones that have flooded the market. The VoIP service was actively used by terrorists who carried out the deadly Mumbai terror attack in 2008 and since then government has been mulling measures to block the facility. While the security agencies are able to detect these conversations, some of them go undetected because of alleged non-cooperation from the VoIP service provider. In the meeting chaired by Home Secretary, DoT and DIT highlighted the hurdles in interception citing unregulated Internet architecture in India and highly decentralised encrypted structure of Skype. PTI