KARACHI, Sept 23: Cellular companies and the telecom regulator have refused to allow direct access to cellphone call and short messaging service (SMS) data to the police for investigating criminal cases, insisting that they could only share the facility with the intelligence agencies, sending a wave of resentment in the local police hierarchy.

The refusal has caused the city police chief to approach the federal government through the provincial authorities to lodge a protest over this “negative progress” with a message that if the facility that the federal interior ministry had earlier decided to extend to the police was denied, the investigators would not be able to resolve rising criminal cases mainly related to kidnapping for ransom.

“We strongly oppose this attitude of the companies and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority,” said Capital City Police Officer Wasim Ahmed. “The federal interior ministry allowed us to have such a facility but we can’t understand the denial by the PTA and the companies, which insist they can only offer this service to the intelligence agencies.”

He said following the “negative response” of the institutions, he sent a letter to the Sindh IG to make it clear to the authorities in Islamabad that in the absence of this facility the police force could not keep in check those rising criminal activities which were related to the mobile phone technology.

The federal government had earlier this year allowed the police to access cellular phone calls and SMSs data while investigating criminal cases through the telecom regulator rather than depend on intelligence agencies, which sometimes take up a lot of time to proceed the requests of the law enforcers.

Later, it added value to the facilitation and allowed the local police to get the cellular data access in high profile cases even without PTA support. However, recent communications between the Central Police Office in Karachi and the federal interior ministry in Islamabad suggested that the decision could not meet a reality check.

“Actually there are serious reservations about cellular companies regarding such a decision of the federal interior ministry,” said a source privy to the discussions between the two sides. “They are actually sceptical about the sensitivity of such data after falling into the hands of the law enforcers and have come up with an excuse before the PTA that they are not prepared yet to share this facility with the law enforcers.”

Currently the police have no authority to obtain phone call or SMS data from the service provider and must navigate a cumbersome and time-consuming process to access information through intelligence agencies, which is often received at a very late stage of the investigation.

With the new rules in place, the police officials were optimistic about improvement in the methods of investigation and reaching the desired results in the minimum time. However, the police authorities regret that the fresh message from the telecom authorities and the cellular companies had put a question mark over the future performance of the law enforcers.

“The police force doesn’t have the capability to counter the rising involvement of technology in criminal activities,” said CCPO Ahmed. “In such a situation, we highly rely on such data to track down the source of their communication and finally locate them. The rising number of kidnapping for ransom cases is the result of such technology, which we are unable to counter in the given situation.”

He said the facility of direct access to cellular communication data could have led to a number of successes on many fronts but it could have largely helped in resolving kidnap-for-ransom cases in the city.

“Still we are doing our best despite the fact that we don’t have the required resources. But we can’t deliver the desired results considering such bottlenecks and incapability,” added the CCPO.