Recent Surveillance Projects in India

(a) Central Monitoring System (CMS)

• The CMS is the country’s ace surveillance project which aims to create a system that provides central and direct access to information without any intervention by third parties.
• Developed by the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), the CMS is capable of accessing all communication data (telephone calls, both mobile and landline, VoIP calls, emails, and other communication on social media).
• In essence, the CMS is an extension of the already existing ‘Lawful Interception and Monitoring System’ which telecom and internet service providers are required to install.
• The service providers are required to integrate Interception Store and Forward (ISF) servers which are connected to various Regional Monitoring Centres.
• What this essentially means is that the CMS has direct access to vast amounts of real-time data and metadata of users.

Although much information does not exist about the program, the government apparently has been running trials in gradual phases. Going by the available information, the Indian government may have been successful in creating India’s version of PRISM program run by the NSA.

(b) DRDO NETRA

• Developed by the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), NETRA is a native system developed by Indian scientists and other staff.
• It was built with the intent of combating threats both internal and external by monitoring real-time Internet traffic.
• NETRA has apparently been fully functional since 2014 and is used by the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing.
• NETRA has the capability to intercept and analyse data (including voice traffic) passing through Google, Skype, and other social networking forums.
• It can also track keywords from emails, tweets, Facebook status updates, comments, blogs, messages on forums, and even images shared over the Internet.

(c) National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID)

• In view of the increasing number of terrorist activities in the country, NATGRID was proposed just after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.
• It is essentially an intelligence grid that links all the stored data from different government and intelligence entities, which enables it to analyse data gathered by the linked agencies.
• The grid provides intelligence agencies access to data sources, including bank accounts, details regarding taxes, credit card transactions, vehicle registration, immigration and visa records among others, which are then used to decipher patterns and track suspicious activities.

(d) Lawful Interception and Monitoring Project (LIM)

• The LIM works in a similar way to NETRA. It is a program for surveillance of Internet traffic in India, allowing the monitoring of all traffic (text and audio) passing through ISPs.
• The LIM’s unique capability is to conduct automated keyword searches, which allows government agencies to track data passing through servers for as long as they want, without the ISP’s knowledge.
• Reports have pointed out that the legal procedures for such monitoring is seldom followed, resulting in the violation of privacy of the concerned individuals.