Millions of mobiles blocked by Indian authorities

[mobaholic]

No ID, no call

India has blocked service to an estimated 25 million mobile phones lacking valid identity codes over concerns criminal or militant groups could use them to organize attacks.

Mobile phones with a blank or all-zero International Mobile Identity (IMEI) code went dead at midnight Tuesday as a result of a government security directive that became law in October 2008.

The 15-digit IMEI number can be used to identify a handset on an operators network, allowing individual calls to be traced to the phone it came from.  Phones without a valid IMEI are usually inexpensive, unbranded handsets manufactured in China.

According to the Times of India, Chinese-made handsets account for about 13.3 per cent of the country's total mobile market.

India's government claims these untraceable phones are a potential security threat when in the hands of unsavory individuals.  The Indian Cellular Association urged compliance with the rules:

"Terrorists and dangerous elements may have taken cover under the illegal and fictitious IMIE mobile phones, which could have been used to trigger a series of criminal activities," the trade organization wrote in an October newsletter.

"As a part of the great mobile trade and industry, we believe that by disallowing the existence of illegal IMEI numbers in our telecom ecosystem we can play a greater role to strengthen our nation's security requirements," it continued.

The government has allowed operators to provide a new unique ID number to phones that don't comply with the new regulation.

Source:-   TheRegister.

[srikanth.nuli]

Hello,

Good Morning everybody...!!!

I'm glad to hear that the Indian government has committed in a firm way which it affirmed an year ago after the November 26, 2009 attacks on the financial capital of India i.e. Mumbai. Many unwanted social elements in the society and in the neighbouring areas are getting masked up by these cloned phones without having IMEI or duplicate IMEI's posing a threat to the national security.

I would be appreciating the Indian government if it can bend the laws governing the monopoly of VoIP services that predominantly includes Skype and some manufacturers like RIM (Research in Motion of Blackberry in USA) who are asserting that they won't allow the government and the National security agencies to intercept the calls. I should accept the fact that the Indian government doesn't have the appropriate mechanism in place to block the VoIP gateways and blackberry's frequency under the existing rules.

Even the satellite phones are the most form of communication methods the terrorists are using now a days. I request the members of this forum to share their knowledge if they know what do the western countries and the developed countries use to control these kind of services? what laws are in place to contend them?

May I thank the members for anticipating them to share their known information here.

Thanking you

[Mikael]

Whilst it is obviously good to try and prevent terrorists from operating, I'm not sure these laws will help. It is very easy to get old mobile phones with legitimate IMEI codes which will be used by such people instead. The trouble with policing communications at all is that you ultimately end up needing a "thought" police, as anyone could potentially use communications devices in an undesirable way.