India Developing Additional National Surveillance System; US Has No Moral High Ground To Protest
from the isn't-one-enough? dept
Like many other countries, India has been steadily extending its national surveillance capabilities. We wrote about its main Central Monitoring System (CMS) back in May last year, with more details in July. In news that shocked no one, we discovered in September that illegal surveillance is already taking place. And now, via The Economic Times, we learn that India has built another, completely independent system for spying on its citizens:
The government will shortly launch 'Netra', the defence ministry's internet spy system that will be capable of detecting words like 'attack', 'bomb', 'blast' or 'kill' in a matter of seconds from reams of tweets, status updates, emails, instant messaging transcripts, internet calls, blogs and forums.
The Hacker News site has more details of how the system will work, with information being gathered from boxes placed on the premises of ISPs:
The system will also be able to capture any dubious voice traffic passing through software such as Skype or Google Talk, says a telecom department note seen by [Economic Times]. "NETRA is a hardware device, and will be installed at ISP (Internet service provider) level on more than 1000 locations. Each location will be called as "Node", with 300GB of storage space. So, there are 1000 nodes x 300GB = 300,000GB of total space is initially decided to set up.
A year ago, news that countries like India were setting up a nationwide surveillance system was met with a self-righteous chorus of disapproval from many Western countries. Today, India can have two of them, and the response is silence. That's a measure of how the West has lost whatever moral high ground it once had, largely thanks to the NSA's dragnet approach that makes it well-nigh impossible for the Five Eyes club and friends to criticize other nations for attempting to emulate it.
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Filed Under: india, netra, surveillance
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So, I take it no-one games or plays sports over there or something? If they had a system like that in the US or UK, it would suffer an epic meltdown, and be completely overwhelmed by false positives from people talking about their latest FPS match, or sports team, or anything like that, in a matter of minutes at most.
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We do and have been developing it since about the 1970s: see ECHELON.
Allegedly.
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OTOH I would recommend that all game-players check the airspace outside their homes for circling drones ... 8)
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Another surveilance system? Blast.
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So my new tagline on all emails will be:
Movies that were absolute bombs: Attack of the 50ft woman, Blast from the past, and Kill Bill.
Those false positives should really annoy them :-)
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ENCRYPT ALL THE THINGS!
If you are a user, use the HTTPS version of a website whenever possible. Start with this one: https://www.techdirt.com/
If you use Google Talk, use Pidgin with the OTR plugin, set to auto-enable OTR when the other side has it. Tell all your friends to do the same. Verify the OTR keys so they cannot MITM.
For voice, use a ZRTP enabled VOIP software. Again, verify your friends' keys.
Let's make systems like that one a useless waste of money, and they'll go away.
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Using it is where the NSA failed hard. They will have a lot of useless data and thats it.
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The response is classified and thus interpreted as silence. India is actually asking for advice from the West on how to build the system effectively. Share the dough!
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Yes we do we'll be protesting for access to your systems.
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curry
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@11
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Moral High Ground?
"That's a measure of how the West has lost whatever moral high ground it once had, largely thanks to the NSA's dragnet approach that makes it well-nigh impossible for the Five Eyes club and friends to criticize other nations for attempting to emulate it."
The whole idea that the west ever had the moral high ground to criticize countries like India is so ludicrous. The west has perpetrated human rights abuses far beyond India could ever dream of, what with the coups incited, dictatorships propped up, legitimate governments overthrown, not to mention the more or less continuous warmongering.
Goes to show how far people buy into the their own "civilized" status. Wake up and understand that much of the world doesn't buy your hypocrisy. It never did.
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Re: Moral High Ground?
Bring up what the US is really like on an international level, and they call you a conspiracy theorist. Then they nod along when someone on the news talks about protecting "American interests" overseas. Ignorance == Bliss indeed.
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Re: Re: Moral High Ground?
No, they call you a traitor.
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Re: Re: Re: Moral High Ground?
Well of course. That's because good citizens will support whatever their government does. Like the good citizens of Nazi Germany. The anti-Nazi's were branded traitors.
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Google Developing Additional In-home Surveillance System; Mike and minions have No Moral High Ground To Protest
Google’s robots and creeping militarization
http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/09/googles-robots-and-creeping-militarization/
Google gobbles upstart thermostat maker Nest for $3.2 BEELLION IN CASH
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/13/google_buys_smart_home_device_builder_nest_for_32_beeeli on_in_cash/
When you think surveillance or spying or snooping or censoring or pushing propaganda, think Google!
03:08:12[d-65-3]
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Re: Google Developing Additional In-home Surveillance System; Mike and minions have No Moral High Ground To Protest
Your argument is irrelevant.
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Re: Google Developing Additional In-home Surveillance System; Mike and minions have No Moral High Ground To Protest
That must be easy money. Read 10-20 posts a day, write one or two responses to each of them bashing Techdirt, Google and Mike. It would take, what? 2 hours a day?
How much does it pay and who should I contact for a similiar job? Microsoft? Apple? NSA/Whitehouse?
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All due to them having a bad case of Foot-In-Mouth disease.
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Global surveillance
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