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NEW DELHI: India can adopt 'never forget and never forgive' attitude of the US and Israel in tracking terrorists, former President A P J Abdul Kalam has said, suggesting that the three countries come together with an integrated taskforce to defeat their threats.
Kalam said the experience of the US and Israel in cooperating with each other on real time basis in countering threats from terror groups has helped in saving the lives of their people.
"The attacks are well coordinated and never end before the threat is completely eliminated, however, long it takes and whatever it takes. Very often the attacks were performed on targets located in unfriendly foreign soil and successfully.
"Never forget and never forgive! India can learn lesson out of their experiences and introduce technologies in tools for focused networked operations," Kalam said last evening while delivering the seventh R N Kao lecture organised by the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).
"It is advisable for democratic countries of the USA, Israel and India to come together with an integrated task force to effectively defeat the threats of the terrorists," he said.
Kao was the founder head of the RAW and headed the agency responsible for gathering external intelligence from 1969 to 1977.
Kalam also favoured setting up of an Indian Intelligence Service through a common recruitment scheme to develop a pool of manpower with recruitment of personnel from special forces for frontline operation.
Kalam said, "Accountability of intelligence agencies has to be clearly defined under one leadership. Information technology and the networked enterprise solutions could be leveraged to develop the integrated view of all the data by every one on a need to know basis irrespective of who owns the data," he said.
Favouring radical realigning of intelligence agencies in the country, the former President said, "Intelligence agencies must practise a proactive approach and not a reactive approach."
Supporting his theory for a radical change in attitude for covert actions and penetration, Kalam said technology driven covert operations are becoming the order of the day and inflicting collateral damages through critical Information Infrastructure is threatening to change the conventional wisdom in warfare.
"Elimination of source of terrorism and other anti national activities origin and crippling their ability to use technology for communication," he said.
Referring to the danger of cyber war, Kalam, who was involved in many scientific assignments of the Government, called for raising up an army of ethical hackers who are ready to attack or defend as needed.
He made two suggestions for countering cyber security threat -- one is technology upgrade and second investment in education in cyber security.
On technology upgrade in cyber security, he said an empowered coordinating agency and government policy are critical to success.
"A single national agency is required, which must receive information about all attacks. We cannot fight these attacks alone information sharing is critical.
"Intelligence agencies must continuously upgrade their technical capabilities - be it signal intelligence, communications intelligence and interception capability, monitoring, information sharing mechanisms and creation of databases of security," he said.
Kalam also stressed on the need for calling in professionals - scientists, computer software and hardware experts - to impart latest skills in computer hacking, cyber warfare.
"Like, hacking is institutionalized in China wherein virus writing is taught in Chinese military schools," he said while giving an example.
Kalam said, "Cyber attack capabilities require a brilliant trained workforce of youth.Like other nations, talent development exercises must be conducted in large scale to catch them young almost out of school. This would foster hacking talent and get a large brigade of hackers into the system.
"Who besides the human talent would also develop 'Bots' that would act as software soldiers ready to attack or defend as needed," he said.
The former President said the cyber security required investment in people and systems for which India has an abundance of raw IT talent and best can be channeled for this kind of work.
On secrecy surrounding intelligence agencies, Kalam said one of the possible solutions for countering the threats is by being visible in public domain and creating greater awareness, breaking the traditional masks of secrecy.
"This exercise of being present in the event dominating social media to garner support from the public and managing the social media through well-orchestrated planning would be the greatest challenge for RAW in the years to come," he said.
On the emergence of social media as a powerful tool, he said governments have been brought down as in the case of Egypt and flash mobs have been motivated to conduct vandalism as in England to demonstrate the power of this media.
"Predicting cascade effects in social media and the ability to alter the outcome of such cascades and arrest them when needed or directing to them ones own advantage requires the symbiotic convergence of not merely the technology and social sciences but also a very watchful monitoring," he said.
Kalam said the technologies underpinning social media should be used to the advantage of unifying people for national growth and security.
"This will form the major thrust of all intelligence activities and I am sure that RAW would strive to be in the forefront of this very soon.
On utilisation of technology, he said deployment of short term usage microlight satellites should be used over suspected areas. These should be launched from aircraft so that tell-tale satellite launch vehicle's usage could be avoided.
Usage of mini and micro air vehicles over urban areas can be used for tracking suspected individuals secretly, he said.
Improved data sharing among centre, state and local agencies, smart ID cards with biometric identifiers, smart visas and improved border security, digital surveillance and facial recognition software were the other suggestions he made for utilisation of technology for intelligence agencies.
Kalam for India-US-Israel task force to fight terror Punjab News | Breaking News | Latest Online News
