It’s not that India can’t manufacture SIM cards as per requirements. The secretary of Smart card Forum of India, Jagdish Raj Purohit, says, “The country has an annual demand for 60 crore SIM cards. Indian companies are capable of fulfilling this demand. Many companies are even exporting their SIM cards.” Yes, Chinese SIM cards are dirt cheap. R. Srinivasan, a senor defence expert, “Chinese equipment, especially SIM cards, supplied at cheap prices is a strategy to break into the internal security ring of the country at minimum cost. In my opinion, these SIMS are embedded with kinds of malwares, spywares, Trojan, hidden software etc.”
The eight parameters which were finalised by the committee included Data Confidentiality, Communication Security, Data Integrity, Privacy. If we pay attention to these four parameters, then SIM cards require security clearance. The interesting point is that when BSNL issued a tender on June 26, 2008, for the purchase of SIM cards, one of the conditions was that only companies having personalisation centres in India need apply. It is evident that even two years back, the government was aware of the dangers from Chinese SIM cards to internal security. When a few companies requested permission to buy Chinese SIM cards after the December 3, 2009, circular, they were denied security clearance. TSI has the copy of the letter no 10-8/2009/AS.III/Unitech sent by the department of telecommunication on February 18, 2010, to Unitech Wireless Private Limited which did not allow it to buy SIM cards personalised in China. Why is this double standard? We tried to speak to several DoT officers including DDG (security) Ram Narayan. But no officer spoke to us on the phone. Apart from this, we even asked for official information from corporate communication officers of Bharti Airtel, Reliance and Idea which buy SIM cards from Watchdata and Eastcompeace. But no one cared to respond to our queries.
The minister of state for communication and IT, Gurudas Kamat, while replying to a question, said in Parliament that “In the interest of the national security, the Government has directed BSNL in May, 2009, that resources should not be procured from Chinese vendors for deployment in the sensitive regions of Assam, Tripura, Sikkim, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Meghalaya, West Bengal, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra.” When it is a matter of national security, then why is the direction given to just BSNL and not to the other private cellular companies which have more subscribers than their state-owned counterpart.
This problem goes bigger as India has no legal treaty with China. India has neither extradition nor any cyber treaty with China. In this situation, if anyone sitting in China commits a crime against India, he will never be brought to book. Further, our cyber laws are pretty weak. Well-known cyber law expert and Supreme Court lawyer Pavan Duggal says, “It is not just an issue of SIM cards as our cyber laws are silent on any type of data protection and privacy. Spyware is not even mentioned in Cyber Laws and IT Act-2000.”
The eight parameters which were finalised by the committee included Data Confidentiality, Communication Security, Data Integrity, Privacy. If we pay attention to these four parameters, then SIM cards require security clearance. The interesting point is that when BSNL issued a tender on June 26, 2008, for the purchase of SIM cards, one of the conditions was that only companies having personalisation centres in India need apply. It is evident that even two years back, the government was aware of the dangers from Chinese SIM cards to internal security. When a few companies requested permission to buy Chinese SIM cards after the December 3, 2009, circular, they were denied security clearance. TSI has the copy of the letter no 10-8/2009/AS.III/Unitech sent by the department of telecommunication on February 18, 2010, to Unitech Wireless Private Limited which did not allow it to buy SIM cards personalised in China. Why is this double standard? We tried to speak to several DoT officers including DDG (security) Ram Narayan. But no officer spoke to us on the phone. Apart from this, we even asked for official information from corporate communication officers of Bharti Airtel, Reliance and Idea which buy SIM cards from Watchdata and Eastcompeace. But no one cared to respond to our queries.
The minister of state for communication and IT, Gurudas Kamat, while replying to a question, said in Parliament that “In the interest of the national security, the Government has directed BSNL in May, 2009, that resources should not be procured from Chinese vendors for deployment in the sensitive regions of Assam, Tripura, Sikkim, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Meghalaya, West Bengal, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra.” When it is a matter of national security, then why is the direction given to just BSNL and not to the other private cellular companies which have more subscribers than their state-owned counterpart.
This problem goes bigger as India has no legal treaty with China. India has neither extradition nor any cyber treaty with China. In this situation, if anyone sitting in China commits a crime against India, he will never be brought to book. Further, our cyber laws are pretty weak. Well-known cyber law expert and Supreme Court lawyer Pavan Duggal says, “It is not just an issue of SIM cards as our cyber laws are silent on any type of data protection and privacy. Spyware is not even mentioned in Cyber Laws and IT Act-2000.”
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