Phone tapping, a sinister weapon

Ayn Rand may not be popular with some people, but she was correct when she said that civilisation is the progress of society towards privacy; the savage’s whole existence is public.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh has expressed his concern at the leakage of tapped telephone conversations into the public domain, and he has asked the cabinet secretary to submit a report on the lapse.

He has, however, asserted the government’s right to tap telephones of those who were violating laws, but he was clear that these tapped calls should not be leaked into the public domain because it would be violation of the individuals’ privacy.

While Singh’s scrupulous distinctions and his assurance that rules will be adhered to are good to hear, the issue of tapped phones goes beyond that. Today, many of us use our phones, particularly mobiles, much more than we did before, and thanks to technology, it has become extremely easy to tap telephones.

That the government has to, for reasons of national security, resort to phone tapping is something most of us accept, even if we do not necessarily approve of it. The police routinely tap phones to nab criminals, a procedure the common man hails. Yet, in all this, it is implicit that any phone tapping is to be done by authorised personnel, who in turn are accountable for their actions.

This immediately puts phone tapping beyond the purview of private parties, whether corporations or individuals. No individual party can justify tapping a phone conversation between two people. Tapping such a conversation would not just be an invasion of their privacy, it would open them to blackmail or worse and there is no justification whatsoever to eavesdrop on another’s conversation.

Indian laws need to be upgraded to ensure that equipment that allow corporations or individuals to carry out phone tapping are banned in India. Those using such equipment should be dealt with firmly. As Indians seek to progress towards greater economic prosperity, we should ensure that our progress towards being a better civilisation is not stopped.