SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS NEEDED TO FIGHT GRAVE THREATS: CENTRE

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Friday told the Delhi high court that “grave threats to the country from terrorism, radicalisation, cybercrime, drug cartels cannot be understated or ignored”, and justified the needs of various surveillance systems such as the Centralised Monitoring System (CMS), Network Traffic Analysis (NETRA) and National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID).

The government said that it is imperative to have a robust mechanism for “speedy collection of actionable intelligence”. It said that no blanket permission has been granted to any agency for interception, or monitoring, or decryption of any messages or information under various surveillance programmes.

The submission was made by the Ministry of Home Affairs in an affidavit filed before a bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh in response to a PIL, which has claimed that citizens’ right to privacy was being “endangered” by these surveillance programmes.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Chetan Sharma, appearing for the MHA, told the court that law enforcement agencies need prior permission of the competent authority before carrying out any lawful interception or monitoring or decryption of any message or class of messages or any information stored in any computer resources. He told the court the right to privacy of citizens is “balanced out” under these surveillance systems.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for NGOS, said that the affidavit does not state what steps have been taken and added that since “all kinds of personal information”, like travel itinerary, purchases, bank transactions etc. were being “intercepted” there was a need for a new set of regulations.