back to article India splurges £100m on new mega internet snooping HQ

India's clampdown on its netizens is set to continue after its government revealed it is setting up a National Cyber Co-ordination Centre to monitor all web traffic flowing through the country – in the name of national security. The Times of India had access to the minutes of a National Security Council Secretariat meeting …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So much for the government trusting its people

    Wonder if they have such a thing for telephone. Or letters. If not, does that make this "because we can" technology deployment?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      WHAT THEY DON'T LIKE

      they will ban.

      When will it be our turn?

  2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Joke

    *incredibly* cheap

    Who are they outsourcing the work to do you thing?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Who are they outsourcing the work to ..."

      The way things are going - Brits, I guess.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: *incredibly* cheap

      Huawei. Or at least that is where some of the contracts went about a year back. Not sure if this one is one of those.

      I... am... not... going... to... comment...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Re: *incredibly* cheap

        Huawei. Good to see they're doing so well up there in Newcastle, winning orders on the international stage.

  3. lemmac

    you really would have thought...

    ... the bad guys would be encrypting already

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: you really would have thought...

      In 2010, encryption was reported during six state wiretaps (out of 3,194 in the whole of the USA), but did not prevent officials from obtaining the plain text of the communications.[1]

      (allegedly, 5 of these intercepts were using sh!t crypto and the sixth, whilst it was a correctly configured and hard encrypted system, was able to be covertly keylogged)[2]

      Sources:

      [1] Administrative Office of the US Courts Wiretap Reports 2010

      [2] Surveillance or Security?: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies by Susan Landau, Harvard. Jan 2011. ISBN-13: 978-0262015301 $20

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Wow!

    Great news!

    My posts are going to be read by somebody now!

  5. Cunningly Linguistic
    FAIL

    I'm sure India's starving millions will consider the price to be a bargain.

    Please remind me again, why is Britain sending millions of pounds in aid to India?

    1. Piloti
      WTF?

      ..... so they can buy Land Rover, Jaguar, British Steel, Tetley Tea [seriously] amongst other things......

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        And, in case anybody is in any doubt, Piloti doesn't mean the products: he means the companies.

        Tata!

    2. Alan Dougherty
      Flame

      10's of millions... if not more.. but that's just to fund the staff cars of the space program / nuclear boffins..

      Unless, of course, by complete accident, some of that money has been diverted to hanging large concrete balls from gantries, to stop the poor from killing themselves on the way to work.

      Nothing to see here, move along, local libdems will kick up a fuss if we decide to question blinkered spunking of taxpayers money on overseas aid.. etc etc...

      Where's the box on my self-assessment form that lets me say where my tax goes?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Everyone Everywhere

    It's a depressing thought that this thing is happening in just about every country worldwide, the UK included. Whatever governments say about the freedom social media brings, I suspect they're terrified (the Arab Spring; the August riots; etc.) . Look at China banning people registering on Twitter-like sites or Bill C-30 in Canada. Governments always use the same old excuses: national security, the criminals are ahead, etc. I sometimes wonder if crime & social unrest magically appeared only when the internet came into existence. Even in good old Blighty where Labour once had the Interception Modernisation Programme (which the now coalition partners criticised) we now have the Communications Capabilities Development Programme. Even things like gaming sessions will be recorded. And of course, it's not just governments. Companies like Google, Facebook, etc. have been harvesting our data. I doubt there's much we can do about this & I think anyone who has any kind of mobile phone or internet connected device has to accept that they're being spied on by someone all the time.

    1. ChrisM

      Re: Everyone Everywhere

      Brilliant, will they make spawn camping illegal then!

  7. Graham Marsden
    Big Brother

    "in the name of national security"

    Ah yes, along with "to protect children" this is one of the best "If you disagree. you must be a terrorist/ kiddy fiddler" arguments to shut down opposition...

  8. zanto
    Go

    to be fair

    India does have to deal with a neighbour such as Pakistan.

    There are people who starve in the UK / US as well.

    India has probably lost more people to acts of terror than any other country. Sometimes your priorities change when a gun is held to your head.

  9. Gordon Pryra

    10 million?

    No offence to anyone reading this, but £10 million probably wouldn't even get you the consultancy needed for this.

    Maybe the consultants expenses though

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe they'll pay the people to go in it enough, so they dont keep pissing off and leaving for industry where the money is much better. So the polar opposite to the uk then.

    Posting anon, but theres no point really is there...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    the terrorism of bad driving

    For some reason this is more of a priority than educating road users to reduce the 135000 and rising fatalities every year.

    I imagine the terrorism only account for a couple of hundred a year.

    what a joke.

  12. Semaj
    FAIL

    Draft emails ... really? Draft emails, which are saved locally. Because they are a draft. Because they aren't ready for sending yet. Right. Unless they think only web mail exists these days, but in that case that would just come under the regular traffic snooping surely.

    No wonder Indian software is such "high" quality.

  13. Cthulhu
    WTF?

    Re "Record this"

    How I wish I could upvote only 50% of a post, and downvote the other half.

  14. Crisp

    Useless snooping

    Most of the message they will catch will be of the form:

    To Some Guy

    Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

    Signed, Some Bozo.

    Of course all the really interesting emails about extra-martial affairs and lolcats will be forwarded around the centre for "review".

    Anyone want to take bets on when the first scandalous email is leaked from there?

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    On the plus side...

    Any chance they could trap some of the spam I get from India? (It's better than it was, but if people could stop trying to get me to apply for degrees from "top Indian universities", it would cut down on my spam a fair bit.)

  16. Michael Dunn

    Oh!

    Saw the headline and thought "So GCHQ are now outsourcing their work."

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Amateur PrOn

    Some guys at the Indian Gov just want access to the encrypted emails and video chats that couples and youngsters across India are doing now :-P

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