India Joins The Super-Snooper's Club (No Legality Required)
from the anything-you-can-do dept
One of the many benefits of Edward Snowden's leaks about NSA spying is that it is flushing out similar activity around the world. Tim Cushing wrote recently about Sweden's illegal snooping, and now The Hindu reveals that India is doing something very similar:
the Internet activities of India's roughly 160 million users are already being subjected to wide-ranging surveillance and monitoring, much of which is in violation of the government’s own rules and notifications for ensuring "privacy of communications".
Here are some details:
unlike mobile call interception safeguards, where only a pre-specified, duly authorized mobile number is put under "targeted surveillance", to prohibit misuse, in the case of Internet traffic, the government’s monitoring system, which is installed between the ISPs Internet Edge Router (PE) and the core network, has an "always live" link to the entire traffic. The LIM [Lawful Intercept and Monitoring] system, in effect, has access to 100% of all Internet activity, with broad surveillance capability, based not just on IP or email addresses, URLs, fttps, https, telenet, or webmail, but even through a broad and blind search across all traffic in the Internet pipe using "key words" and "key phrases".
As that makes clear, the safeguards that exist for mobile interception are absent when it comes to the Internet, where pretty much anything goes. Moreover, like the UK's Tempora system, the Indian government is spying on all kinds of Internet traffic, all the time, and is able to carry out arbitrary keyword searches on it.
It's been a few months since Snowden made his first disturbing revelations, so we ought, perhaps, to be inured by now to news about the trampling of people's privacy online. But it's nonetheless depressing to come across yet another example of government contempt for the rights of its citizens.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: india, internet surveillance, surveillance
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
For some reason that brings a smile to my face. :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I'm wondering, it seems clear that we are moving away from freedom of speech and privacy in a quite fast pace. Is there any Government that is not engaged in such practices to some degree?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The extend of the more sophisticated cooperation with private companies, subvertion of encryption software, economic espionage, development of computer disrupting technology etc. will however vary with budget and country. In these areas it is every man for himself.
A significant part of the secret services can be seen as international organisations with some very vague goals of stopping terrorism. That all of them lack severely in political oversight and a minimum of transparency is an international problem and not a single nations problem as long as they have common interests.
Most of the secrecy in this area of the secret services is a blast from the past and today some of it is kept secret only because it may be less positive for the secret service image. On the other hand, the secrecy makes it extremely hard to clean up the waste of money in most of them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The bright side is that the leaks seem to have weakened the power of the "terrorism" punchline in these countries. But I wonder if it's too little too late.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Bad economic decisions can be reversed once they are found to be bad. Corruption would prevent such reversal and add other bad decisions to the mix. Hostile neighbors? Really? Not with the military power and the territorial extension the US has but you sure are creating a lot of anger towards yourself with all this espionage and the egocentric diplomacy. I'm using "you" and "yourself" mainly referring to the Government btw. No, the downfall comes from inside.
Infact, things are messy because individuals have too much freedom. Personally I won't have it any other way :)
I struggled to understand that you won't take less freedom even if it means things getting messy. But you see I disagree that there is too much freedom. There's a lot of perceived freedom. And if there was freedom in fact we would see the dozens of attempts of bringing back balance to this whole madness actually succeeding and moving ahead. Not arbitrary prisons, investigation and intimidation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What legality?
Like hackers do. Not asking permission, and GETTING SHIT DONE.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: What legality?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: What legality?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
ok
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ok
Seriously, it does look like Indiana Jones.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ok
*raises hand*
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: ok
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Raises Hand
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ok
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]