Time India woke up to US surveillance

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140803/edit.htm

Hardeep S Puri

THE Indian establishment had been remarkably silent on the comprehensive surveillance to which India, its leaders, political parties, diplomatic representation and its economic entities have been subjected by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the US. Salman Khushid’s statement that what was being collected was only ‘metadata’ lead to the inference being drawn that there was some collaborative arrangement between New Delhi and Washington. Whilst the jury is still out on the ‘collaboration’ part of the arrangement, if any, information now available in the public domain, thanks to Edward Snowden, indicates an altogether different and more serious dimension.

Visiting Secretary of State John Kerry was told by Sushma Swaraj on July 31 during the US-India Strategic Dialogue that India had been outraged and that such snooping was unacceptable. Some of the implications of such surveillance for our national security need to be understood.

Within a few weeks of India being elected to the UN Security Council, on 22 December 2010, as India’s PR to the UN, I addressed a communication to the then Foreign Secretary requesting both preventive and countermeasures in the more important offices and conference facilities urgently for protection of in-house discussions/meetings and for the security of our communications. There was not even an acknowledgment of the request made, let alone any action on this written communication carrying the highest classification.

The Snowden revelations and the ‘top secret’ documents released by him have now been collated by Glen Greenwald in his recently released book ‘No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US, Surveillance State’.

A top secret document of August 2010 has the following:

“In late spring 2010, eleven branches across five Product Lines teamed with NSA enablers to provide the most current and accurate information to USUN (United States Mission to the United Nations) and other customers on how UNSC members would vote on the Iran Sanctions Resolution.… SIGINT was key in keeping USUN informed of how the other members of the UNSC would vote.

“…according to USUN, SIGINT ‘helped me to know when the other Permreps [Permanent Representatives] were telling the truth… revealed their real position on sanctions… gave us an upper hand in negotiations… and provided information on various countries’ “red lines”’.”

Page 146 lists seven programmes, as then being operational against India, four against the Indian Permanent Mission to the UN in New York and three against the Indian Embassy in Washington.

The explanatory notes make interesting reading. The operations against India/UN are codenamed NASHUA, the ones against the Embassy in Washington, OSAGE. More importantly, the following programmes described as ‘Mission’ were being used against Indian establishments in the US: HIGHLANDS (collection from implants), VAGRANT (collection of computer screens), MAGNETIC (sensor collection of magnetic emanations), LIFESAVER (imaging of the hard drive).

Now that the External Affairs Minister has termed the surveillance ‘unacceptable’, it stands to reason that we should ask for a response on whether these programmes are still operative or have been withdrawn and/or whether new surveillance programmes have been introduced.

The collaborative arrangements between the multinational Internet and telecom majors and the NSA of the US should concern us even more.

AT&T has partnered the NSA since 1985. US court records in the class action suit Hepting Vs. NSA are revealing. (Details at https://www.eff.org/cases/hepting). Page 102 of a “top secret” slide presentation of the NSA shows AT&T as one of the “80 major global corporations” supporting its missions. Page 103 shows the NSA has a ‘Special Source Operation’ which has a list of three major corporates giving it access to various kinds of telecommunication facilities.

One of the corporates which is part of the “Special Source Operations” has been given the code name “Fairview.” The official document describes FAIRVIEW as a “Corporate partner since 1985 with access to international cables, routers, switches. The partner operates in the US, but has access to information that transits the nation and through its corporate relationships to provide unique access to other telecoms and Internet Service Providers. Aggressively involved in shaping traffic to run signals of interest past our monitors.” (Page 105)

Now, a fit case for ‘Ripley’s Believe it or Not’. Whilst AT&T is an established collaborator and contractor for the NSA, its India representative for 20 years has managed to join the permanent Joint Committee on International Cooperation and Advocacy (JCICA) under the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS). This has been facilitated by an apex Chamber of Commerce.

Protestations that a person associated with AT&T for over 20 years cannot be part of such a sensitive committee have had no effect. He is a member of the committee set up to author the guidelines for the protection of the National Critical Information Infrastructure which will be manned by the NTRO.

I have tried in my own limited way to draw attention to the security implications of some of these issues since I left government in 2013. Snowden’s leaked documents published by Greenwald will hopefully drive home the seriousness of the issues involved. Perhaps we will soon be able to make a determination on whether we were collaborating with or are victims of such surveillance.

(The author, a retired diplomat, was India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva and later New York. The views expressed are personal)