Nation's strategic, commercial interests may have been compromised
The public assertions made by Indian and American officials that no
content was taken from India’s internet and telephone networks by U.S.’s
National Security Agency (NSA) and that the American surveillance
programs just looked at “patterns of communication” as a
counter-terrorism measure are far from the truth, if not outright
misleading.
According to a top secret document disclosed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and obtained by The Hindu,
the PRISM programme was deployed by the American agency to gather key
information from India by tapping directly into the servers of tech
giants which provide services such as email, video sharing,
voice-over-IPs, online chats, file transfer and social networking
services.
And, according to the PRISM document seen by The Hindu, much of the communication targeted by the NSA is unrelated to terrorism, contrary to claims of Indian and American officials.
Instead, much of the surveillance was focused on India’s domestic
politics and the country’s strategic and commercial interests.
This is the first time it’s being revealed that PRISM, which facilitates
extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications as well as
stored information, was used by the world’s largest surveillance
organization to intercept and pick content on at least three issues
related to India’s geopolitical and economic interests. They are:
Nuclear, Space and Politics.
The top-secret NSA document, which carries the seal of “Special Source
Operations”, is called “A Week in the Life of PRISM reporting” and it
shows “Sampling of Reporting topics from 2-8 Feb 2013”. Marked with a
green slug that reads “589 End product Reports’’, the document carries
the brand logos of companies like Gmail, Facebook, MSN, Hotmail, Yahoo!,
Google, Apple, Skype, YouTube, paltalk.com and AOL on the top of the
page.
“End products” are official reports that are distillations of the best raw intelligence.
In a section titled “India”, the document clearly mentions numerous
subjects about which content was picked from various service providers
on the worldwide web in just one week early this year.
This document is strong evidence of the fact that NSA surveillance in
India was not restricted to tracking of phone calls, text messages and
email logs by Boundless Informant, an NSA tool that was deployed quite
aggressively against India. “As politics, space and nuclear are
mentioned as “end products” in this document, it means that emails,
texts and phones of important people related to these fields were
constantly monitored and intelligence was taken from them, and then the
NSA prepared official reports on the basis of raw intelligence. It
means, they are listening in real time to what our political leaders,
bureaucrats and scientists are communicating with each other,” an
official with an India intelligence agency told The Hindu, speaking
strictly on condition of anonymity.
But, top ministers and officials have continued to live in denial.
After it was reported by The Guardian on June 7 that the PRISM program
allowed the NSA “to obtain targeted communications without having to
request them from the service providers and without having to obtain
individual court orders”, both U.S. and Indian officials claimed that no
content was being taken from the country’s networks and that the
programs were intended to “counter terrorism”.
Kerry’s dissembling
During his visit to New Delhi on June 24 to take part in the India-U.S.
Strategic Dialogue, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry denied that the
American agency programmes were accessing online content. “It does not
look at individual emails. It does not listen to people’s telephone
conversation. It is a random survey by computers of anybody’s telephone,
of just the numbers and not even the names…It takes those random
numbers and looks whether those random numbers are connected to other
numbers, that they know, by virtue of other intelligence, linked to
terrorists in places where those terrorists operate,” Mr. Kerry had
said, stressing that only when an “adequate linkage” is formed, the
authorities go to a special court to get permission to obtain further
data.
Even Indian officials have been repeating these lines since the NSA
activities in India were disclosed. Replying to a question in Rajya
Sabha on August 26, Communications and Information Technology Minister
Kapil Sibal said the U.S. agencies only “trace origin and destination of
the data, but never try to get access to the content, which requires a
court approval”. “It would be a matter of concern for government if
intrusive data capture has been deployed against Indian citizens or
government infrastructure. Government has clearly conveyed these
concerns to the U.S. government,” the minister had said, adding that the
violation of any Indian law relating to privacy of information of
ordinary Indian citizens by surveillance programs was “unacceptable”.
This “unacceptable” line might have been crossed by the NSA millions of
times through the PRISM program as, according to the documents disclosed
by Mr. Snowden, it is able to reach directly into the servers of the
tech companies that are part of the programme and obtain data as well as
perform real-time collection on targeted users. “The National Security
Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook,
Apple and other U.S. internet giants,” The Guardian had said in its June
7 report, quoting from a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation which was
apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of
the program.
Foreigners are fair game
Tech firms have denied that they allow unfettered access to the NSA. In
strongly worded denials of participation in any government surveillance
program, they have claimed they allow access to any data to the agency
only when required by law.
Here lies the catch. Contrary to denials by tech firms and claims by
India’s communication minister that the U.S. agency “requires a court
approval” to look into any online content, the NSA used the changes in
U.S. surveillance law that allows for the targeting of any customers of
participating firms “who live outside the US, or those Americans whose
communications include people outside the US”. This law, known as FISA
Amendment Act or FAA, was introduced by President George W Bush and
renewed under President Barack Obama in December 2012, allows for
electronic surveillance on anyone who is “reasonably believed” to be
outside the U.S.
No Indian citizen, government department or organisation has any legal
protection from NSA surveillance. In a Joint Statement from the Office
of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security
Agency on August 21, 2013, it was stated that “FISA is designed to allow
the U.S. Government to acquire foreign intelligence while protecting
the civil liberties and privacy of Americans.”
So the NSA had no obstacle — technical or legal — in deploying the PRISM
tool against India and Indian citizens. Armed with the FAA and with the
active cooperation of the world’s biggest internet brands, the NSA was
able to tap specific intelligence from India about the issues which have
huge implications for its strategic interests in India. While India’s
“nuclear” and “space” programmes have clearly significant commercial
value for American firms, the surveillance of “politics” has huge
implications for its foreign policy objectives in the region.
“If Americans are listening to our politicians and tapping the phones or
reading mails of individuals who handle nuclear and space programmes,
they have huge advantage over us in all business and diplomatic
negotiations. Even before we go to the table, they know what we are
going to put on it. It’s not just violation of our sovereignty, it’s a
complete intrusion into our decision-making process,” said a senior
official of the Ministry of Home Affairs, who admitted in private that
the reports about the scale of NSA surveillance have “rattled” the
government.
The NSA document also has names of several Asian, African and Latin
American countries from where the American agency picked data about
subjects ranging from oil to WTO to government policies, making it clear
that the NSA spying was focused on commercial and business areas, and
not on its stated objective of national security. “If the American
intelligence agencies and business corporations are hunting in pairs, we
are bound to lose,” added the Indian official.
More than anything, the targeting of India’s politics and space
programme by the NSA busts the myth of close strategic partnership
between India and US. The document seen by The Hindu is populated with
the countries that are generally seen as adversarial by America. When
the PRISM program was disclosed first time in June, a U.S. official had
said that information “collected under this program is among the most
important and valuable intelligence information we collect, and is used
to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.”