Mumbai cops have reservations about 4G rollout; write letter to DoT

Mumbai Police has made its reservations clear in a letter written to the state government as well as the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) regarding the rollout of 4G telecom services. According to a report in The Economic Times, Mumbai Police want the telcos to provide adequate safeguards in place before rolling out 4G services. Their main concern is the misuse of 4G services by criminals belonging to the underworld and terrorist organisations. The Mumbai Police has asked the state government and DoT to not allow telcos to roll out 4G services in Mumbai without putting systems in place that would let cops track those using these services for security purposes. According to a senior police official quoted by ET, the Mumbai Police has sent out a list of requirements that telcos need to put in place to ensure cops can track these services. “We have asked that until these steps are not incorporated then the state as well as the DoT shouldn’t permit any roll out of 4G service in the state.” said the officer. The concern for the cops is the user of over the top (OTT) services such as WhatsApp, Skype and so on, specially tracking of phone calls on Voice over LTE (VoLTE). Former chief technology officer of the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) Major T T Thomas has also agreed with the demands of the Mumbai cops. According to him data sent over OTT services is encrypted by the respective applications. “All you would know is that A is calling B but you wouldn’t know what is being said or passed over. Service Providers would handover the raw data but without the decryption keys it means nothing!,” said Thomas to ET.