NGOs flag ‘generalised surveillance’ of citizens in Delhi High Court

The nonprofits alleged that the government was withholding information on the scale of its surveillance apparatus.

The Center for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) and the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) on Thursday flagged what they said was “generalised surveillance” of Indian citizens by the Government, in an ongoing case before the Delhi High Court.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan argued on behalf of the non-profits that in a “press release,” the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) said that the “government has ordered us to provide all the traffic which goes through the internet to their [Centralised] Monitoring System (CMS).“

Mr. Bhushan was referring to a regulatory submission that was obtained from the Department of Telecommunications in November 2022, where the ISPAI admitted that broadband providers “are mandated to connect their systems to the CMS facility”, and that “law enforcement agencies are provided facility for on-line and real-time monitoring of traffic.”

“This effectively means everything— all our private communications, all our emails, all our phone calls, everything will be piped into the Central Monitoring System,” Mr. Bhushan charged in court. Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma, representing the Union Government, said that similar matters were pending before the Supreme Court, and asked the court for time to respond to SFLC’s affidavit.

“This kind of centralized monitoring [is] taking place through these three systems: the Central Monitoring System, NETRA and NATGRID, these are generalized surveillance [programmes], not [done] on a case-to-case basis,” Mr. Bhushan said, referring to three communications interception systems the Government runs to intercept network and call traffic. The Government has insisted that it uses these systems with safeguards and due process.

Mr. Bhushan pointed out, however, that the Government said in Parliament that the home secretary approves 7,500 to 9,000 interception requests a month. “It is impossible for any single human being to be able to scrutinize these many requests in a month and give permissions on any reasonable basis,” Mr. Bhushan said. “It’s a very serious matter.”

“It’s a very serious matter on maintainability also,” Mr. Sharma shot back. “Without pointing out a single instance, a generalized carte blanche is raised.”