No! This is not about the new album by Snoop Dogg, nor of cutie Snoopy from the comic strip. This is about the ongoing media storm raising over the snoop scandal of Gujarat. ‘The hyenas are baying for blood’, for there is this terrible prophecy emanating in the outback that the ‘Great Wind’ that brings the plague to wipe them out is coming. So, there’s no surprise that the pack has closed ranks. The one that hid in the stables during the Uttarakhand disaster now blows nostrils on the idiot box. The one with the perpetual lizard smile has joined the chorus. The fellow who won entry into politics defending the fodder scamster continues his vitriol. The circus is complete.

There are whines that the Gujarat snoop scandal is on the same level as depraved psychos Asaram and Tejpal. Dame Dikshit says this snooping has outraged the modesty of the girl but then, does the President – the Constitutional head of the country – possess any modesty and can that be outraged? If yes, by whom? MK Dhar, former Joint Director, Intelligence Bureau writes in his book ‘Open Secrets – India’s Intelligence Unveiled’ that throughout the tenure of Zail Singh as President (July 1982 to July 1985) his bedroom and office in Rashtrapati Bhawan were bugged on the orders of the Congress High Command (note that the author doesn’t say Government) and the transcripts were regularly passed on to the Congress High Command. So more specifically, this is not only about the raging controversy over the allegedly illegal surveillance on a young woman architect by the Gujarat Government, but the issue of snooping itself, leaving aside a letter from the girl’s father saying his daughter was aware of being shadowed but saw it as a ‘help’.

According to some reports, the Gujrat snoop scandal has violated the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 – an Act to amend the law relating to Telegraphs in India. Scrutiny of this Act shows there is nothing related to snooping. Besides, Britishers who defined the Act obviously were without access to Nostradamus or Bhrigu in order to visualise what the snooping and surveillance technologies in the twenty-first century would be. So while reference to the Constitution with respect to individual privacy is appropriate, quoting the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 appears preposterous. But Constitution apart, what is the stance of our Government with respect to snooping – leaving Gujarat aside? When Snowden blew the lid off the PRISM program of US’s National Security Agency (NSA) what was the reaction of Government of India even with the information that our foreign missions were being snooped upon under PRISM. While America’s closest allies went berserk on this count, Salman Khurshid actually defended PRISM by saying, “This is not scrutiny and access to actual messages. It is only computer analysis of patterns of calls and emails that are being sent. It is not actually snooping specifically on content of anybody’s message or conversation….”. Mr Minister, this is hardly a game of ringa ringa roses. If PRISM is not snooping, what is? Kapil Sibal sidelined the question about Khurshid’s comments but said, “We do not know the nature of data or information sought (by PRISM).” Mr Minister, you may not know the nature of data collected by PRISM but you would certainly know that security agencies very well use the data mined to blackmail the polity in their own national interest, no matter what strong-rooms the skeletons are locked up in. Is that the reason the US is ‘nudging’ India on Kashmir, why the Government is bending backwards to Pakistan and China, why support is being orchestrated to vacate Siachen, and why the PLA is allowed to sit 20 km deep inside Indian territory for 25 days despite a 1.2 million-strong army? How many of you are in the PRISM stranglehold?

So, if Central Ministers are defending PRISM, isn’t it acknowledgment enough the Government is ‘for’ and ‘not’ against snooping. Isn’t this the reason the much-hiked UIDAI scheme was being forced through despite the security hackles raised by the MHA? Was this not invasion of individual privacy, linked with vote-bank politicking (to dole out largesse selectively) and is this not the reason the Court has struck down its linking with grant of individual subsidies? Then, mirroring PRISM is the Centralised Monitoring System (CMS) being implemented by the Government of India. Will the latter not mean conducting multiple privacy-intrusive activities, ranging from call data record analysis to location-based monitoring? How will it differ from PRISM, if at all? But why even bother when we don’t have objections to PRISM in the first place. So, be prepared for snooping on your phones and the Internet. If you think the Government is not already doing so, you have to be kidding. Just speak to your friends in NTRO and IB. Who do you think was interested in snooping on Amar Singh some years back, or more recently, Arun Jaitley?

Unquestionably, surveillance through a system like CMS is warranted in the interest of national security but it is the wrongful use of such a system that needs to be stamped out. To quote MK Dhar once more in his above quoted book, he writes that all intelligence agencies in India are tasked for and focus on how to do down the Opposition. Isn’t that the main reason why the much-needed NCTC could not come through? When the current dispensation does not hesitate to even pitch one intelligence agency against another for political gains, how do you expect them to use the NCTC to focus only on terrorism?

Next issue is who can order the snoop. The obvious answer will be Government in national interests. So far so good, but then how did the President of India come to be snooped upon for three full years on the orders of Congress High Command? Are the Congress High Command and the Government of India Jekyll and Hyde or are they aiamese twins? MK Dhar makes another disclosure – three years before Babri Masjid demolition happened, all meetings of the BJP and RSS were secretly audio taped and videotaped by the Intelligence Bureau on orders of Congress High Command and although scores of these were available in IB archives, only a few (which had an element of doubt) were handed over to the enquiry commission. Forget Congress High Command, the question whether the Central Government alone can order the snoop is itself debatable considering that the Government has absolved itself from dealing with a major internal security threat like the Maoist insurgency centrally and has left it to the States. So can both the Central and State Governments order snooping? And, what are the numerous private James Bond agencies doing in the country, who and what is regulating them?

Reportedly, the petition related to the Gujarat snoop scandal is slated to be dealt with by the Supreme Court on December 6, but who will deal with the numerous questions mentioned herein?

Some two years back, there was considerable commotion in media on the reported bugging of the office of the Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, who as per reports, confirmed that he suspected that offices of the Finance Ministry were bugged and wrote to the Prime Minister. The incident actually happened in September 2010, with discoveries in the office of the Finance Minister, his advisor, his personal secretary and two conference halls of the Finance Ministry. Following the discovery, strangely, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) was called in instead of the IB. Later, the IB brushed the incident away on orders of the High Command. There is a move now to usher in legislation against bugging as well but are we going to need another Lokpal to legislate it if the Government itself is involved, IB and NTRO exempt from RTI and High Command untouchable?

Then there are the ever expanding networks, computers and Internet users in India that are bugged or have sleeper bots within. India only assembles computers with practically all parts imported mainly from China. This is similar to considerable software and telecommunication equipment – 95 per cent of BSNL and MTNL equipment – being Chinese. All this leaves tremendous scope for embedding malware at the development stage itself. To top this, India does not have the capacity to test such imported equipment for bugs and Trojans. The NSCS issued a warning earlier this year against Chinese firms ZTE and Huawei. ZTE maintains a diverse relationship with PLA including collaborative research (satellite navigation, data link jamming techniques include), training of PLA personnel and is the prime supplier of customised equipment to PLA while Huawei has is linked to Chinese and PLA research institutes and the including dual use applications. However, the venerable MHA has lifted all embargos recently on whose behest? Obviously, when we are happy with PRISM and don’t mind snooping on our citizenry – CMS included – what is the problem with a little bit of snooping by our Chinese brethren? As per a report in the Wall Street Journal published in July 2013, global hacker firms like Auriemma and Ferrante have sold their services to Israel, Britain, Russia, India and Brazil – reportedly some of the biggest spenders in this regard. Hopefully, we will be using these services in building comprehensive national security and not political security of the ruling dispensation. Exposed, the NSA has justified snooping to vulnerability of critical infrastructure, susceptibility of the military’s command and control structure and economic dependence on the Internet, even as potent cyber offensive capabilities are rapidly building under General Keith Alexander.

Given the range of snooping, the justification is hardly a fit. Additionally, the full horror of what Snowden holds is yet to emerge. What is becoming clear in the US is that for nearly 20 years, most of America’s biggest corporate sectors, from energy to finance to telecom to computers, all have been doing the intelligence community’s bidding. Indeed, the private technology sector effectively built the NSA’s surveillance system, and got rich doing it. So, one can expect our own CMS following suit, for isn’t it the moolah that attracts the big corporate? TV debates dare not go beyond political skullduggery. Damn individual privacy of the citizenry!