NETRA: India's mass surveillance project

What is NETRA?

NETRA (NEtwork TRaffic Analysis) is network software developed by India's Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR),  Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) laboratory.

It is used by the Intelligence Bureau (India's domestic intelligence agency) and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) (the country's external intelligence agency) to intercept and analyse internet traffic using pre-defined filters.

NETRA derived its name from the Sanskrit word for eye.

This program was tested at smaller scales by various national security agencies, and is reported to be deployed nation-wide as of January 2014.

History of developing NETRA

• Security agencies in India were looking to build a system that could monitor Internet traffic on a real time basis due to the rapidly escalating threat posed by terrorist and criminal elements using data communication, which had brought service providers like BlackBerry, Skype and Gmail into the focus of law enforcement agencies.

• An inter-ministerial committee had selected NETRA as the internet monitoring system. The committee is staffed by members from Ministry of Home Affairs, Intelligence Bureau, Department of Telecom, Department of IT, and National Investigation Agency.

• The committee said that NETRA was an indigenous solution involving government scientists and personnel and no component of solution had been outsourced to an outside agency. The committee further observed that CAIR has been continuously investing in R&D to keep up with the fast-changing web technologies

• This system was first demonstrated at the premises of Sify Technologies to capture the entire internet traffic passing through its probes.

Capabilities of NETRA in mass surveillance

• NETRA can analyse voice traffic passing through software such as Skype and Google Talk and intercept messages with keywords such as 'attack', 'bomb', 'blast' or 'kill' in real-time.

• It can even track keywords from the enormous number of tweets, status updates, emails, instant messaging transcripts, internet calls, blogs, forums and even images generated on the internet to obtain the desired intelligence in real time. 

• It helps track traffic to websites the intelligence services suspect might be linked to jihadi activity. That opens the way to locate target computers and mobile phones and infiltrate them with software that can monitor keystrokes, and record conversations.

• The system with RAW analyses large amount of international data which crosses through the internet networks in India.

• Three security agencies, which include the IB and RAW, have each been allotted a maximum of 300 Gigabytes (GB) per node totaling more than 1000 nodes for storing intercepted internet traffic (there are 1000 nodes x 300GB = 300,000GB of total space is initially decided to set up), and an extra 100 GB per node is assigned to the remaining law enforcement agencies.

India’s other mass surveillance projects

• Central Monitoring System (CMS):

It is a data collection system similar to the NSA's PRISM program.

It enables the Government of India to listen to phone conversations, intercept e-mails and text messages, monitor posts on social networking service and track searches on Google.

• Lawful Intercept and Monitoring (LIM):

It is a mass surveillance program used by the Indian government to intercept records of voice, SMSs, GPRS data, details of a subscriber's application and recharge history and call detail record (CDR); and monitor Internet traffic, emails, web-browsing, Skype and any other Internet activity of Indian users.

• NATGRID:

It is an intelligence grid that links the databases of several departments and ministries of the Government of India.

Privacy vs. security

Currently following are the authorised government agencies to intercept and monitor citizens’ calls and emails, under the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court, The Indian Telegraph Act 1985, Rule 419(A) and other related legislation

1.        Intelligence Bureau (IB).

2.       Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

3.       Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

4.       Narcotics Control Bureau.

5.       Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI)

6.       National Intelligence Agency.

7.       CBDT (tax authority).

8.      Military Intelligence of Assam and Jammu & Kashmir.

9.       Home Ministry.

The interception authorization done IB and RAW are kept secret and thus it has no scope of a transparent public.