In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, everyone is under complete surveillance by the authorities. His phrase “Big Brother is watching you” – the core “truth” of Orwell’s fictional society – assumed a new meaning when Wikileaks broke news about the National Security Agency (NSA) of the US listening to phone calls of its citizens, and reading the contents of private emails, text messages, and live chats on social media.
In India too, the State seems to be using similar tactics in the name of security. A report by the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) revealed that Indian authorities have installed a number of surveillance systems in the communication networks used by private citizens. Over 100,000 telephone interception orders are issued by the central government every year, besides the staggering number of surveillance orders issued by the State governments, the report said.
All this is possible because Big Brother listening to citizens’ private communications is authorized by the law. The Indian Telegraph Act and Information Technology Act allows law enforcement agencies to closely monitor phone calls, texts, emails and general internet activity on a number of broadly worded grounds. Under section 69 of the Information Technology Act, internet service providers have to assist government agencies to intercept any communication, and a failure to comply with this law may result in imprisonment for up to seven years and fines.
The report by SFLC titled ‘India’s Surveillance State’ noted:
An unknown number of Lawful Interception and Monitoring (LIM) systems tasked with the collection and analysis of citizens’ communications data and meta-data are already installed into India’s communication networks. On top of these, capability-enhancing technologies and databases such as the Central Monitoring System (CMS), Network Traffic Analysis (NETRA), and National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) are in varying stages of deployment. The government of India is also known to outsource surveillance initiatives to private third parties, some of which go so far as to infect target devices using malicious software in order to gain access to information stored within.
SFLC had filed an application under India’s Right to Information Act (RTI) and unearthed a list of 26 companies, including foreign companies, which had expressed interest in a government tender floated for internet monitoring systems. They are:
- Alcatel-Lucent India
- Agilis Information Technologies International
- Appin Software Security
- Aqsacom India
- ClearTrail Technologies
- Electronics Corporation of India Ltd.
- HCL Infosystems
- Hewlett-Packard India Sales
- Innefu Labs
- Intellingent Communication Systems India
- ITI
- Kommlabs Dezign
- Law Abiding Technology
- Narus Networks
- Netsweeper India
- NICE Systems
- Pyramid Cyber Security and Forenscis
- Siemens Information Systems
- Span Technologies
- Span Telecom
- SS8 Network
- Telecommunications Consultants India
- Vehere Interactive
- Verient Systems India
- Vox Spectrum
- Xalted Information Systems
Several of these companies are in the list disclosed as part of the Spy Files project of Wikileaks. Tech in Asia is reaching out to some of these companies for comment.
A month after the Indian government set aside an INR 100 billion fund (US$1.6 billion) for tech startups, it has also approved INR 1000 billion (US$16.5 billion) for an ambitious program called ‘Digital India‘ to bring internet connectivity to the nooks and corners of the country. The target is to bring broadband connectivity to 250,000 villages, make one million people digitally literate by end-2015, and provide wifi hotspots in tourist centers, schools, and cities with a population of over a million. Wider surveillance puts a dark spin on this Digital India project.
See: Singapore an advanced surveillance state, but citizens don’t mind
(Top image: Flickr user Mike Mozart)
The post This is how creepily Big Brother is watching you in India appeared first on Tech in Asia.
This is how creepily Big Brother is watching you in India
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