External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid’s ‘defence’ of the U.S. surveillance programme PRISM has implications for the privacy of Indian citizens. The flip-flop by the Ministry of External Affairs — first terming it as an “unacceptable” invasion of privacy then stating that this “wasn’t really snooping” but “scrutiny” made us the first country to support the controversial PRISM.
A big concern is that the data being gathered by our government may also be made available to the U.S. for “scrutiny” at some point in the future. Also, by supporting PRISM, the Indian government is indirectly and preemptively defending its own surveillance program — the Central Monitoring System, unveiled by the government in 2011 — to monitor text messages, social media engagements, phone calls etc.
Even if we have to do a double volte-face, India needs to follow the lead of the Europeans who have been enraged by U.S. actions and demanded clarification on whether the U.S. government in fact, spied on them. Our government must demand to know exactly what data was ‘scrutinised’, whether it included any official correspondence and exactly which terror plots were foiled on the basis of such data. Information on this count will also help India refine its own anti-terror detection programmes.
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