The public outcry on the US program “PRISM” under which US Government is said to be spying on Cyber Communication of individuals has naturally raised some attention on the Indian situation.
Under ITA 2008 there are powers for the Government to intercept cyber communication under reasons of national security, prevention of cognizable crimes etc. However it is also true that Indian intelligence agencies often resort to interception without adequate legal sanction or procedures. The past indications clearly point out the misuse of intelligence for political purposes also. Since India does not have a strong “Privacy” law, it is presently difficult to prevent surveillance by intelligence agencies. The Government also uses the ISP licensing regime to gain access to ISP data.
It is believed that not only the Indian Government but also several other countries such as UK and Australia have huge surveillance mechanisms in place.
Though Government of India has recently stated that their National Security agencies may tap only the meta data and not go into content, the assurance can only be taken with a pinch of salt. Individuals therefore need to bank upon private encryption if they want privacy. Though law may still be invoked by the Government to demand decryption, in a majority of cases the user may at least be aware that his communication is being monitored.
The biggest challenge for the security agencies is to ensure that the need to monitor criminal activities where they genuinely need power to surreptitiously carry on surveillance is suitably met. In such cases the intelligence agencies may need to break the encryption themselves. Since breaking a strong encryption could be difficult, any person using encryption could be treated as a “Suspect” in the eyes of the Government and may be subjected to physical surveillance as well. The cost of security of the nation is therefore likely to sky rocket in the coming months.
In order to find a solution to this problem it is necessary for the Indian intelligence agencies to broker a treaty with the privacy community, establish a trusted relationship so that common public would not resort to wide usage of encryption and make national security costs prohibitive. For this purpose Government should offer a system of Monitoring of  surveillance agencies by a committee” consisting of select members of public and putting in place a strict regime of procedures that the mechanism would not be used for political and tax purposes.
Naavi
