The Supreme Court on Thursday sought the Centre’s response on a PIl that raised serious national security concerns over a US-based spyware available in the Indian market by which sensitive private data of our mobile phones could be accessed by the Government or any stranger at a cost ranging from Rs5,000 to Rs50 lakh.
The Bench of Justices JS Khehar, Madan B lokur and Kurian Joseph issued notice to the Centre on the PIl filed by a computer expert Prashant Pandey who acted as a whistleblower after having access to this software while working with police and investigating agencies. It was during investigation of one such case he discovered that officials of Madhya Pradesh Police had subscribed to the software provided by “Spundan-The IT Pulse”, which is US-based but has an office registered at Indore.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, Indira Jaising and Vivek Tankha, who argued the petition, told the Bench that such a software made our personal telephone call records, message data, location and movements vulnerable to be misused by criminals and unwanted elements. Sibal submitted that for police and the Government agencies the data was available at a cheap sum of Rs5,000 while interested private citizens would require to shell out anything between Rs 5 lakh to Rs50 lakh to obtain information about any individual, howsoever high.
While privacy would be one issue to deal with by the court, it issued notices to CBI, Military Intelligence and Madhya Pradesh Government as the plea raised a threat to national security on account of the software being accessed by terrorists or crime syndicates to target high profile persons.