The Radia Tapes affair showed that there has probably been a total dilution of the procedure and controls with the result that anybody who wants to snoop has been doing so in reckless disregard of the requirements of the need and obligation to protect the privacy of the citizens and to observe the requirements of the law. Snooping has become the name of the game in many Government departments and State Police.
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Another worrisome development has been the evident resort to random snooping. There are two kinds of snooping —-targeted snooping of suspects against whom there is suspicion of wrong-doing and random snooping in order to monitor what has been going on in cyber space and mobile frequencies. In the US, whereas targeted snooping is allowed subject to certain conditions and procedures, random snooping, which is a violation of the privacy and human rights of citizens, is totally forbidden. The Clinton and Bush Administrations tried hard to give limited powers of random snooping to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the NSA for counter-terrorism purposes, but the Congress disallowed it. Barkha, Vir Sanghvi and Tata were apparently the victims of illegal random snooping by the Income Tax Department. Had a similar incident happened in the US, not only would there have been a detailed Congressional enquiry into it, but the judiciary would have also awarded heavy damages to the victims.
In India, the absence of effective external controls over organizations having the capability for snooping facilitates the misuse of the capabilities for purposes not connected with national security and for besmirching the well-earned reputation of innocent citizens, who find themselves without any defence because they do not know and understand what the hell has been going on.
“¦a high-level committee has been monitoring the use of the TECHINT capabilities to prevent misuse would act as a deterrent against tempted misuse.
It is important for the Government to go into this matter and establish an architecture of legal and procedural safeguards to ensure that our TECHINT capabilities are used only against suspected wrong-doers and not against innocent citizens—either consciously or unconsciously.
Ideally, as in many democracies such as the US and even highly security-conscious Israel, a parliamentary oversight committee for intelligence should be on top of the safeguards architecture. There has been strong resistance from the Indian intelligence community to giving Parliament any oversight role in such matters relating to the intelligence agencies. The political leadership hasn’t had the courage to overrule the nay-sayers in the intelligence community and set up a parliamentary oversights mechanism.
While trying to overcome the resistance from the intelligence community, the Government should set up a Cabinet Committee on Intelligence—-separate from the Cabinet Committee on Security— to go into such matters in a regular and systematic manner. It should be chaired by the Prime Minister with the National Security Adviser as the member-secretary and should consist of the Home Minister and the Defence Minister. The very fact that such a high-level committee has been monitoring the use of the TECHINT capabilities to prevent misuse would act as a deterrent against tempted misuse.
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