Monday, 21 October 2013

Attack on India's sovereignty and democracy---S.G.Vombatkere

Spying-snooping-scrutiny
Edward Snowden’s expose caused international outrage for NSA infringing on individual privacy, and on friends and foes alike at governmental and public levels. USA’s NATO allies were vocal in their feigned outrage at the revelation that their cyberspace had been secretly invaded by NSA, even their embassies bugged, and data mining performed on their official and private citizens’ communications. True to this writer’s prediction that “there is unlikely to be even a squeak on this sovereignty issue” [Ref.3], India, far from even feigning outrage, has sought to play down USA’s presidentially-sanctioned spying, snooping and surveillance by terming it as “scrutiny” of India’s cyberspace. However, even “scrutiny”, the mildest of the terms [Note 2], is objectionable because it impinges on India’s sovereignty.................................................................................................................................................................................     

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Surveillance and security
Surveillance by USA on India’s leaders and private citizens is bad enough, but India is preparing for its own internal surveillance. Surveillance assumes that the subject surveilled is a suspected spy or a criminal [Note 2]. This assumption for general public surveillance in a democracy is unwarranted because the general public becomes “suspect”. Surveillance of criminal suspects (targetted surveillance) is standard police and intelligence practice and, in a democratic society, is done with appropriate established, well-defined checks and safeguards, so that the power of surveillance is not misused to gain advantage or blackmail or settle scores for political or partisan purposes. Even with checks and balances in place, targetted surveillance has led to innumerable cases of staged or false “encounters” resulting in extra-judicial killings based on questionable intelligence reports, mere suspicion or motivated political orders.

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