Mobile phones as contact bridges

Ever since the mobile phone made its appearance in the subcontinent over a decade ago, its portability has made life easy not only for the average Joe but the terrorist and the underworld operative.Not anymore. Ever since the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force hunted down the Sriprakash Shukla gang in 1998 after tracking down their mobile phones (as seen in Kabir Kaushik's 2005 film Seher), the underworld and militants have come to realize that mobile phone are perhaps more vulnerable than land lines because of the footprint they leave - security agencies can not only listen in on conversations but also track their movements across the country.The Al Qaeda top leadership holed up in Pakistan's restive north-western frontier province are said to have shunned mobile and satellite phones in favour of human couriers.In India, the underworld and militants have been using innovative methods to stay ahead of the cell phone monitoring. One such method was used by the Nagori faction of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).During his interrogation by the Madhya Pradesh police, one of the SIMI members Hafiz Hussain revealed how the Tanzim members were cautious in communicating with each other using mobile phones.They were aware of being caught through cell phone intercepts. To avoid the scenario of a dozen top leaders calling each other up from across the country and risking interception, members of the underground group evolved a system of 'contact bridges' for receiving and sending messages to other group members.Two members of the group – Hafiz Hussain and Shibly – had mobile phones through which they sent and received messages from other members of the group who dialed them from local lines.It seemed to have worked for a while. But top 13 leaders of the group, including Safdar Nagori, were eventually caught following the arrest and interrogation of two of their key associates in Karnataka – not for making a phone call, but for riding a stolen motorcycle