India has reacted strongly to news from Washington that USA’s top spy agency — National Security Agency (NSA) — was authorised by a USA court in 2010 to carry out surveillance on the BJP, along with five other political organisations across the world. These organisations included Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and Pakistan Peoples’ Party, according to a classified document. The document was made public by The Washington Post on Sunday.
India termed the reports as “extremely disconcerting” and said that if true, the matter will be taken up with the USA as it was totally unacceptable that an Indian organisation or Indian individual’s privacy was transgressed upon.
“The issue was raised with the US both here and in Washington with the concerned authorities when information trickled down to us earlier. We will follow the same process because it is totally unacceptable that an Indian organisation, Indian individual’s privacy is transgressed upon, if that is correct… At this stage, I have not seen these reports. But our view is pretty clear that it is extremely disconcerting that privacy laws in India are undermined,” said Syed Akbaruddin, spokesperson for External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi.
Senior BJP leader and Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said the NSA snooping on the BJP is a very serious issue and the Indian Government is going to look into it.
The BJP figures in the list of foreign political parties along with lebanon’s Amal, the Bolivarian Continental Coordinator of Venezuela, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian National Salvation Front, and the Pakistan Peoples Party for whom the NSA had sought permission to carry out surveillance, says the document made public by The Washington Post.It lists the 193 foreign governments as well as foreign factions and other entities that were part of a 2010 certification approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The list includes India.
“These are the entities about which the NSA may conduct surveillance, for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence,” the paper said, citing documents provided to it by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. It said each year a new certification must be approved by the court to permit such surveillance under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.
“Virtually no foreign government is off-limits for the National Security Agency, which has been authorised to intercept information ‘concerning’ all but four countries, according to top-secret documents,” The Post reported. The four countries are Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.The certification of surveillance also includes other international organisations like World Bank, IMF, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency. “The NSA is not necessarily targeting all the countries or organisations identified in the certification, the affidavits and an accompanying exhibit; it has only been given authority to do so,” The Post said.
Without specifically responding to questions related to surveillance on India and the BJP in particular, NSA spokesperson Vanee Vines told PTI that the agency collects foreign intelligence based on specific intelligence requirements set by the President, the Director of National Intelligence, and departments and agencies through the National Intelligence Priorities Framework. “Our intelligence agencies and every intelligence agency out there will continue to be interested in the government intentions of countries around the world. That’s not going to change,” US President Barak Obama had said in January when the incidents of international snooping were first reported.
Snowden leaked thousands of classified documents to the media uncovering the existence of numerous global surveillance programmes, many of them run by the NSA, triggering an outrage worldwide.