New Delhi: Government has launched a wide-ranging surveillance programme that will give security agencies and even income tax officials the ability to tap directly into phone calls and emails ,without oversight by courts or parliament, sources said.
The expanded surveillance, which the government says will help to safeguard national security, has alarmed privacy advocates at a time when allegations of massive US digital snooping beyond American shores have set off a global furor.
“If India doesnt want to look like an authoritarian regime, it needs to be transparent about who will be authorized to collect data, what data will be collected, how it will be used, and how the right to privacy will be protected,” said Cynthia Wong, an Internet researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch.
The Central Monitoring System (CMS) was announced in 2011 but there has been no public debate and the government has said little about how it will work or how it will ensure that the system is not abused.
The government started to quietly roll the system out state by state in April this year, according to government officials. Eventually it will be able to target as many as , Indias 900 million landline , mobile phone subscribers and 120 million Internet users.
Interior ministry spokesman K S Dhatwalia said he did not have details of CMS and therefore could not comment on the privacy concerns. A spokeswoman for the telecom ministry, which will oversee CMS, did not respond to queries.
Officials said making details of the project public would limit its effectiveness as a clandestine intelligence-gathering told.
“Security of the country is very important. All countries have these surveillance programmes,” said a senior telecommunications ministry official, defending the need for a large-scale monitoring system like CMS.
“You can see terrorists getting caught, you see crimes being stopped. You need surveillance. This is to protect you and your country,” said the official, who is directly involved in setting up the project. He did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject.
