Illegal wiretapping and intellegence agencies oversight

[EjazR]

www.outlookindia.com | We, The Eavesdropped

Digvijay Singh, Congress general secretary
February 2007
Digvijay Singh was driving from his house in South Avenue through Sardar Marg Patel having a conversation on his cellphone with a Congress leader from Punjab. The two were discussing possible candidates for 2007 chapter of the Congress Working Committee elections, which are held every three years. The leader from Punjab was seeking Digvijay’s support for his possible candidature. Unknown to them, their entire conversation was being tapped and filed in a computer system. Digvijay had this to say about the surveillance: “I think it is illegal and unethical.”

Nitish Kumar, Bihar chief minister
October 2007
The Bihar CM was on his way in his official car from Bihar Bhavan in Chanakyapuri to South Block for a meeting when his conversation—on a cellphone belonging to the then Bihar resident commissioner, who was travelling with him—was tapped. Nitish was discussing with a colleague how to get more funds from the Centre for his state. Other related issues like projects on the Kosi river also figured in his call.

Sharad Pawar, Union agriculture minister
April 2010
Discussions between the minister and IPL commissioner Lalit Modi were tapped and taped last fortnight in the wake of the scandal in the cricket league. The recorded conversations allegedly threw up inside details of the deals that were struck in the bidding process for the various teams.

Prakash Karat, CPI(M) general secretary
July 2008
The cellphones of Opposition leaders were tapped to ascertain their plans regarding the Indo-US nuclear deal and the consequent no-confidence motion in Parliament at the time. Karat was targeted since he was leading the charge against the UPA government.

M.K. Narayanan, Then NSA
He was instrumental in bringing the new tapping technology to India in 2005-06. During a demonstration at an NTRO facility in Delhi on Jan 7, ’06, his phone was tapped successfully.

***

In February 2007, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh was on his cellphone with a party leader from Punjab. With Congress Working Committee (CWC) elections due soon, the Punjab leader was discussing his possible candidature. Neither was aware that the conversation was being tapped and taped. In fact, a team from the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), an intelligence agency created in the aftermath of the Kargil war to cover all aspects of technical intelligence-gathering, was monitoring the conversation. The call was recorded, logged and filed away.

Likewise, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s mobile phone was tapped during an official visit to Delhi in October 2007. The call was intercepted while he was going in his official car from Bihar Bhavan in Chanakyapuri. Sources familiar with the interception say Nitish had called a colleague in Delhi seeking his help to lobby with the Planning Commission for more funds for Bihar. The CM was using the phone of the then Bihar resident commissioner who was with him. He also discussed certain projects for flood relief, and spoke about a project related to river Kosi. Currently a close aide of Nitish Kumar, the resident commissioner categorically confirmed to Outlook that the Bihar CM did make such a call and that he had this discussion.

Digvijay expressed surprise when Outlook sought his comment. While he couldn’t recall the exact details of his conversation, he conceded that there was a distinct possibility of it having taken place. It is a matter of fact that the CWC elections were due later that year. The CWC nominations and elections are held every three years. They were held last in 2007 and are due again in the latter half of 2010.

“The conversation may have taken place,” Digvijay told Outlook. “But I think this is very disturbing. I am very surprised to know that the government has been eavesdropping on political leaders, which I think is illegal and unethical.” While he wondered how such tapping could go on in a government headed by Dr Manmohan Singh, he felt that modern (surveillance) technology should be used only for national security.

Both Digvijay and Nitish’s phones were tapped using the new off-the-air GSM monitoring device, which can track and tap into any cellphone conversation within a two-km radius. Nor have Digvijay and Nitish been the sole victims of such tapping. The device, sources say, was used extensively to listen in on the conversations of opposition leaders during the July 2008 no-confidence motion on the Indo-US nuclear deal. One intelligence agency targeted some leaders of the Left Front, including CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat, to fathom the Left’s strategy to bring down the government. More recently, in fact last fortnight, the conversation between IPL commissioner Lalit Modi and Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar was tapped and allegedly used to pressurise Pawar to call for Modi’s resignation.

“The whole system works on deniability,” a senior intelligence official told Outlook. “It can be deployed anywhere. We don’t need to show any authorisation since we’re not tapping a phone number at the exchange but intercepting signals between the phone and the cellphone tower and recording them on a hard disk. If too many questions are asked, we can remove the disk and erase the conversation. No one gets to know.”

Outlook has also learnt that an air vice marshal, then posted as an air defence commander in the Western Air Command, was put under similar surveillance. The officer’s cellphone, besides those of his wife and other family members, was tapped for several weeks in the early half of 2006. Ironically, the air vice marshal also applied for a position in the NTRO as a joint secretary since he had been overlooked for promotion by the air force.

 

[EjazR]

www.outlookindia.com | Who?ll Monitor The Monitor?

A CAG audit, inquiry by a high-powered committee spell disaster for NTRO

Created in the aftermath of the intelligence failure in Kargil, the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) was supposed to be at the cutting edge of gathering intelligence via technical means. But just six years after its birth on April 14, 2004, the outfit is gasping for breath.

Mired in corruption and known for operational inefficiency, it has become a hub for nepotism and has the dubious distinction now of being the first intelligence agency in the history of independent India to be subjected to a financial audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.


More than the audit, though, it’s the ongoing inquiry being conducted by a one-man high-powered committee that threatens to shake the agency’s very foundations. The man heading the committee, P.V. Kumar, retired as a special secretary from the Research and Analysis Wing last year and was absorbed into NTRO as its advisor. Kumar has now been given the unenviable task of inquiring into the murky waters around the organisation in the hope that it can be brought back on track.

Topping Kumar’s agenda are the alleged misdeeds of the agency’s second-in-command, Dr M.S. Vijayaraghavan, a former DRDO scientist who was inducted into NTRO under mysterious circumstances. Why was someone who had spent his professional life working with semi-conductors and heading a facility that dealt with silicon chips chosen to head a technical intelligence organisation? His detractors attribute it to his proximity to the scientific advisor to the prime minister, R. Chidambaram.

The high-powered committee has been asked to look into some of the allegations of misappropriation and misconduct against Vijayaraghavan. These are:

* He chaired several price negotiation committees, including one that purchased a large number of routers from US firm CISCO Systems in an order worth US $1 million. Subsequent to the purchase, Vijayaraghavan’s daughter was employed by CISCO. Did the promise of a job influence the deal?
* Kumar is also looking into the details of Vijayaraghavan’s travels abroad as well as the total expenditure incurred by NTRO on the same. Documents available with Outlook show that NTRO spent Rs 18.22 lakh in 2007-2008, Rs 16.72 lakh in 2008-2009 and Rs 8.04 lakh in 2009-2010 to sponsor his travels.
* Vijayaraghavan’s appointment was allegedly made without a search committee or an advertisement. Did this not violate the recruitment rules of the government?
* There are several other issues as well. For instance, Vijayaraghavan was staying at a posh, two-storeyed bungalow in Delhi’s upmarket Hauz Khas locality for almost a year. While the rent for the bungalow ran into several lakhs a month, he didn’t have to pay a single rupee.

The most worrying aspect of Vijayaraghavan’s current tenure, however, is that while being appointed as advisor to NTRO, he was also allowed to continue in his earlier capacity as head of a DRDO lab as well as serve as the executive director of a non-government society seen as a lobby for the electronic industry. Known as the Society for Electronic Transactions & Security (SETS), it paid for a huge bungalow in Bangalore where his family stayed while he resided in Delhi. Interestingly, while the gazette notification states that he was appointed in the pay scale of Scientist “G”, his current appointment is a grade higher.

But Vijayaraghavan’s indiscretions are not the only anomalies at NTRO. The agency appointed Vaibhav Vikrant, a man with a financial background, to fly by remote control its Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Usually the preserve of experienced IAF pilots, Vikrant only had to take a snap course in flying aero-models in Hissar for his appointment to sail through.

Then there are security breaches. Ruchi Srivastava, an NTRO official, allegedly purchased a computer mainframe of Chinese origin, without bothering to seek the approval of the agency responsible for clearing such purchases, the Cipher Policy Committee. Similarly, a portable satellite communication system was purchased from a Singapore-based company blacklisted by the Indian government.

Worried about the massive security and financial implications, the government asked the CAG to begin an audit in Feb 2010. Kumar likewise was asked to begin a thorough investigation into the other allegations. Sources say the report, when ready, could sound the death knell for NTRO. The organisation, built on the patterns of the American National Security Agency, is now busy fighting its internal demons, rather than stopping terrorists preparing to wage a covert war against India.

 

[EjazR]

Another of MK Narayan's many disasters. His tenure as the NSA was probably the worst since the NSA post was created.

 

[chachachoudhary]

With naxalites and terrorists having a field day across the country, our intelligence machinery is being used for political purposes. Is there an administration in india?

JAI HO

 

[Kinetic]

NTRO is not to blame for its political uses. NTRO was created for good, what it needs to is serving India. There are illegal connection of the political leaders with the antisocial and anti-India elements. They should be tracked by the NTRO. I am happy that India created such a org.

I think govt should file a criminal case against outlook for calling a govt of India agency as outfit. I either they are paid by some culprits or part of some bigger game.

It will be better if the NTRO goes under the armed fores.

 

[EjazR]

^^^It was the offcials running the NTRO that did this. They curried favors with politcians as well. But mostly it was a case of nepotism and corruption within the NTRO. Please read the report on BLUNDERS committed by NTRO offcials like buying a computer from China and other equipment from blacklisted companies. How stupid can a person be to do this when working in an intelligence agency?

It is high time that all intelligence agencies are brought under political oversight with something like a select parliamentary intelligence panel that can authorise and monitor what is done. Anything that is done outside this should be made illegal and liable for prosecution.

This is what is done in the US/UK and multitude of other countries. We don't want to become like China were we end up becoming a paranoid police state.

 

[EjazR]

Advani wants Parliamentary probe on phone-tapping issue


New Delhi, Apr 26 (ANI): Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Lal Krishna Advani on Monday has called for the setting up of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the phone-tapping issue.

Speaking in the Parliament today he asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to give a detailed explanation on the phone-tapping issue. “We demand a JPC probe into the whole episode…We will be satisfied only if PM gives an explanation,” Advani said.

Advani said phone tapping reminded one of the emergency, as it was very common during the emergency to tap phones.

Earlier on Sunday in his blog, Advani expressed shock over reports in a section of media describing the involvement of government agencies in tapping the phones of senior politicians.”It is a shocking report describing how the Government of India has been making use of the latest phone tapping technology to prepare records of telephonic conversations of prominent political leaders,” Advani said.On Saturday, a section of the media reported that government agencies have been tapping the telephones of Bihar Chief Ministers Nitish Kumar, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat and Congress leader Digvijay Singh. Advani demanded the scrapping of the outdated Telephone Act and to bring a new legislation to protect citizens’ privacy.”What is really required in this context is to set up a Parliamentary Committee on the lines of the Birkett Committee in Britain to examine all aspects of the problem, scrap the outdated Indian Telephone Act of 1885 and replace it by a new legislation which forbids invasion of an ordinary citizen’s privacy,” Advani said.He said a new law should formally recognise the right of the State to use the latest IT devices of interception to deal only with crime, subversion and espionage. Advani said the law must provide statutory safeguards, which make it impossible for the Government to abuse its powers against political activists and journalists.Advani’s blog mentioned many incidents of phone tapping in the past including a press conference of June 25, 1985, on the 10th anniversary of Emergency by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He said Vajpayee had then referred to large-scale phone tapping that was done during the 19 months of Emergency.

Meanwhile, both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha have been adjourned till noon over the issue.

‘Outlook’ magazine in a cover story has reported that government’s intelligence agencies had tapped the phones of the Communist leader, Prakash Karat, and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar among others. (ANI)