Lawful interception of Internet, mobile and other
technology related communications is a big challenge for Indian
government. Indian government is trying to do the same that can best
serve its interests. However, in its zest to ensure technology
communication interceptions in India, Indian government is landing up
in doing “unlawful interceptions”.
The lawful
interception law is needed in India and the same is still
missing despite contrary governmental claims. Till now, phone
tapping in India is not constitutionally performed. The
truth is that big
brother in India is violating Indian constitution and even
courts are silent on this aspect.
Indian government has been taking many steps that
are strengthening its e-surveillance and censorship capabilities
without meeting the constitutional requirements. For instance, the
central
monitoring system project of India, national
cyber coordination centre (NCCC) of India, national
intelligence grid (Natgrid), national
counter terrorism centre (NCTC) of India, Aadhar
project of India, etc are all proposed without any legal
framework supervising and justifying their functioning.
On the one hand the home
ministry is mulling lawful interception law of India and
on the other hand it has forced Blackberry
messenger service to be an e- surveillance tool in India.
Telenor’s
security clearance was blocked by home ministry recently
and even the FIPB
rejected Telenor’s joint venture proposal as pre mature.
Civil
liberties in India and technological revolution are
considered mutually exhaustive in India. Initiatives like
surveillance
of Internet traffic in India are executed without any
procedural safeguards and constitutional rights. E-surveillance
in India is presently done with virtually no legal
framework. Whatever rules that have been framed in this regard by
Indian government, they are clearly violating the constitutional
freedoms and rights.
As a matter of fact, civil
liberties protection in cyberspace in India have been
totally ignored and false claims of national security are raised to
suppress civil liberties in India. ICT
policies and strategies of India are grossly defective and
clearly violating human
rights in cyberspace. In fact, there is a dedicated
resource titled websites,
blogs and news censorship by Google and Indian government
that is making a database of various censorship and results
manipulation activities in India.
Indian government must ensure civil
liberties protection in Indian cyberspace as that is its
constitutional as well as human right obligation. Further,
parliamentary
oversight of intelligence agencies of India is needed.
Till now there is no parliamentary scrutiny of the intelligence
agencies in India. The sooner these initiatives would be taken the
better it would be for the larger interest of India.
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