Correspondents in New Delhi
JUNE 30, 2005  

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's office said New Delhi favoured changes in laws to make illegal data transfer a punishable offence but said "occasional miguided acts of individuals should not be allowed to damage the reputation of all professionals".
"Singh reviewed the steps taken by the government and the industry to deal with the challenge of cyber-crime and to ensure data secrecy," the Prime Minister's spokesman Sanjay Baru is reported as saying.

The reaction came less than a week after an Indian call centre sacked a junior employee who allegedly sold sensitive details of 1,000 British bank customers to an undercover British reporter.

Mr Baru said the Prime Minister had urged his Information Technology Department and the industry association NASSCOM to consult all stake holders for suggestions to deal with such crimes.

"And, if necessary, to ensure that any breach of secrecy, illegal transfer of commercial and other privileged information and any other form of cyber-crime is made a punishable offence," the spokesman said.

India's Information Technology Act prescribes punishments for data theft, including prison terms of up to five years, but IT experts say the legislation has too many loopholes and that law enforcers are inadequately trained to tackle such crimes.

Mr Baru said New Delhi was determined to weed out corruption from the call the centre industry, which employs 400,000 personnel across India.

"Indian professionals have built for themselves an enviable global reputation through hard work, dedication and commitment and the occasional misguided acts of some individuals should not be allowed to damage the high reputation of all professionals" he said.

Last week British tabloid The Sun said one of its journalist had paid Karan Bahree, a 24-year-old employee of Infinity eSearch, $US5000 ($6500) to obtain data such as expiry dates and security numbers of credit and debit cards.

Mr Bahree allegedly told The Sun he had obtained the information from a network of contacts inside call centres used by British banks.

India has played down the data theft scandal, calling it a rare case and the country's multi-billion dollar business process outsourcing industry has launched a major damage control exercise.

India has emerged as a major back office to the world with global firms outsourcing work ranging from credit card processing to air ticketing to take advantage of its less expensive, educated, English-speaking workforce.

(Source: news.com.au)