Financial Services Authority will require mobile phone calls to be recorded
22 April 2010
The FSA consultation paper regarding removing the exemption for mobile phones was recently released on the 18th March. The proposal states that subject to a further three months consultation period, its probable that all company supplied mobile phones that are used in a trading environment will need to be recorded. It is likely that companies will be given twelve months to comply with the new directive.
While the scope of the proposed rule change will only apply to mobile phones issued by companys for business purposes, the FSA is also proposing to introduce a new rule requiring companys to take "reasonable steps" to ensure that business calls are not made on personal mobiles.
The consultation paper goes on further to say that the technology has advanced sufficiently to enable companys to record calls from staff mobiles. The wiretap can either take place on the handset itself of via a remote server. It can then be retrieved and stored on an in house or outsourced hosted server.
Read the full consultation paper here.
Relevant excerpt states the following:
Proposed changes to taping rules: We propose to extend the current taping obligations to require the recording and storage of all 'relevant communications' made with, sent from or received on mobile phones. We propose to apply this rule only to those mobile phones that are issued by firms for business purposes. To support this, we also propose to introduce a new rule requiring firms to take reasonable steps to ensure that such communications do not take place on private communication equipment which firms cannot record mainly for privacy reasons. This includes private mobiles, private handheld mobile electronic communication devices as well as and private non-mobile electronic communication devices.
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