India sets up elaborate system to tap phone calls, e-mail

[dipsydoodle]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - India has launched a wide-ranging surveillance programme that will give its security agencies and even income tax officials the ability to tap directly into e-mails and phone calls without oversight by courts or parliament, several sources said.

The expanded surveillance in the world's most populous democracy, which the government says will help safeguard national security, has alarmed privacy advocates at a time when allegations of massive U.S. digital snooping beyond American shores has set off a global furore.

"If India doesn't want to look like an authoritarian regime, it needs to be transparent about who will be authorized to collect data, what data will be collected, how it will be used, and how the right to privacy will be protected," said Cynthia Wong, an Internet researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The Central Monitoring System (CMS) was announced in 2011 but there has been no public debate and the government has said little about how it will work or how it will ensure that the system is not abused.

Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/20/uk-india-surveillance-idUKBRE95J05L20130620

[L0oniX]

1. O boy ...here we go

The same tech used on us here will be used elsewhere and most assuredly will be much more intrusive.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Don'tcha just love globalization?

[jwirr]

2. Great they are going to outsource spying on us.

[htuttle]

3. They're going to spend a lot of time and money listening to telemarketers and reading spam emails.

[Javaman]

4. in an odd twist...

India just got rid of their last telegraph system. Yes, you read that correctly.

And I think it's because they simply couldn't spy on what was being communicated on the wire.