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India illegally intercepting Internet traffic'--passing through the
SEA-ME-WE submarine cable connecting Western Europe, the Middle East
and South East Asia, in violation of international laws.
Wednesday August 08 2007 12:24:34 PM BDT
By Iftikhar Gilani
NEW DELHI: Indian intelligence agencies not only eavesdrop on domestic
telephone lines but have also been intercepting international
communication traffic passing through the SEA-ME-WE submarine cable
connecting Western Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia, in
violation of international laws. Set up in 2000, the cable is the main
source of connectivity for telephones and broadband Internet services
in the region. Major General VK Singh, former head of the Research and
Analysis Wing's (RAW) technical cell, claims that the agency has
procured interception-technology from France. The equipment has been
installed at the VSNL (India's overseas communication service) gateway
in Mumbai, he says.
Spilling the beans in his latest book "India's External
Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)," Gen Singh
says RAW, in its bid to emulate the US Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), has been unnecessarily tapping telephone traffic between, for
example, Germany and Japan.
Gen Singh also claims in his book that the CIA has repeatedly tried to
intrude on the Indian intelligence network over the past few decades.
He believes "honey traps" are one of the favourite techniques employed
by the CIA to hook Indians. As the latest case, he cites a woman
officer in the US Embassy, Rosanne Minchew's involvement in breaching
the security of the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS).
Gen Singh, who is the first officer to write a book on his former
organisation, says earlier accounts written by civilian Ashok Raina in
1968, and reproduced by Fahmida Ashraf in Pakistan in 2004, were
highly inaccurate.
In his book he lends credence to reports that Indian commandos did not
storm the hijacked IC 814 aircraft in December 1999 when it landed at
Amritsar because a senior RAW official was onboard. Quoting a report
from Asianweek, he says the individual was Shashi Bhushan Singh, a
senior RAW undercover officer posted at the Indian embassy in
Kathmandu, and the brother-in-law of NK Singh, the most senior
bureaucrat at the time in Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's
office. The author also lashes out at the former NDA government for
going public with the famous interception of a telephone conversation
between Gen Pervez Musahrraf and his chief of staff, Lt Gen Mohammad
Aziz, to prove Pakistan's complicity in the Kargil war. Gen Singh
believes India may have won some brownie points with the United States
by going public with the intercepted conversation, but it led to
Pakistan immediately closing the satellite link between Beijing and
Islamabad, which RAW had been tapping into for quite some time. "It is
impossible to estimate the value of intelligence that would have been
obtained if the link had continued to be used," he writes.
Demanding parliamentary oversight over intelligence agencies, Gen
Singh says lack of accountability is the most glaring shortcoming of
RAW. Incompetent leadership as well as mistrust are also eating into
the credibility of the organisation.
Since RAW officials are not answerable to any outside agency, many
officers treat themselves as being above the law, and in fact as a law
unto themselves, he adds.
"This sort of belief is often found in police and intelligence
agencies in totalitarian regimes, but appear out of place in a
democracy," writes the former chief of RAW's technical intelligence cell.
http://www.dailytim
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5Cstory_8-8-2007_pg7_48
The Daily Pakistan
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Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:15 CST