Group items tagged

For those agitated over the big brother snooping on their lives, there is more bad news in store as India's external intelligence agency, the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) has been notified by the UPA government as an "authorised agen-cy" to legally intercept phone calls, e-mails and all forms of data, voice and electronic communications with immediate effect. This is the first time in R&AW's history since its inception in 1967 that it has been allowed to snoop on Indian citizens in addition to its espionage activities abroad.

The Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) is set to become the first educational campus in the country to function through unique identification (UID) numbers. The UID-enabled campus will work towards making a cashless environment where all transactions from buying a notebook to a parantha in the canteen will be done through UID numbers and biometric (fingerprint) authentication.

NEW DELHI: The government has asked telecom operators and internet service providers (ISPs) to install indigenously developed monitoring equipment, in a move aimed at increasing surveillance of internet traffic. Post installation, the cost of which will have to be borne by operators, the equipment produced by state-owned research agency C-DoT will be manned by the government's security agencies.

Kolkata The recent order by the Criminal Investigation Department to its units to stop phone tapping as part of monitoring of crimes has caused a concern among a section of the CID investigators. It may be noted that when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took over the office, she had said that police tapped phones indiscriminately and that it had to stop. The CID order is seen as a follow up action, sources said.

On Wednesday, acting Chief Justice of the high court AK Sikri, while hearing an unrelated case, had asked traffic police to desist from publishing names and photographs of violators on its social networking site as it involved breach of privacy. The court had said that it "may take cognizance" of such action in future.

To Bolster the surveillance capability, the Chandigarh Police is set to acquire an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle 'Netra' for Rs 35 lakh as necessary certificates from the Defence Research and Development Organisation has reached them. Now, the proposal will be sent to Chandigarh Administration to take a final decision on it. "The acquisition of the UAV has been delayed as the company that had developed 'Netra' had submitted certificates from its side, but the 'propriety certificate' and 'reasonability certificate' (a certificate indicating that the rates quoted are not more than that charged to other government bodies or PSUs) from the DRDO were awaited," said Alok Kumar, Deputy Inspector General of Police, Chandigarh.

With India planning a huge database of 1.5 crore criminals for matching with the hand or face sample of an accused, the criminals or terror mongers will find it much tougher to hide. A fingerprint or a face in a CCTV shot captured from a crime or terror scene anywhere in India would lead the law-enforcing authorities straight to the culprit at the click of a button. The home ministry is working on an ambitious project to collect the fingerprints, palm prints, faces and iris samples of all the arrested and convicted persons in the country and store these in a central database. This biometric data will be accessible to all the police units across the country for getting real-time results on the identity of a suspect. Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/home-ministry-plans-national-database-on-criminals/1/157679.html

The RFP will be floated on the basis of the recommendations of an expert panel on specifications for cameras and connectivity. The panel includes IIT professors and senior state officials (who are former IITians). The state plans to install 5,000 CCTV cameras at sensitive locations in the city as part of the surveillance network. The project is estimated to cost Rs 600 crore.- Sandeep Ashar

The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has brought in an amendment to its Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Regulation of Supply and Distribution) Order 2000 making the Unique Identification Number (UID) under the Aadhaar project must for availing LPG refills.