Stop playing ostrich on cyber snooping

There is considerable consternation in some circles at New Delhi’s tame acceptance of illegal intelligence gathering by US agencies and India’s bland refusal to give Edward Snowden, the man who exposed such snooping, the political asylum he sought.


This kind of moral outrage is misplaced. New Delhi is entirely right to have acted as it has. To have acted otherwise is to have shut out a vital source of intelligence that could prove vital in stopping a future terror attack on this country.

Let us accept facts. We do not live in ideal times. Terror stalks the world, India in particular. Intercepting terrorist communications is one way to be forewarned and take preventive action. Governments around the world try and gather such information, and share it with other governments they think fit to share with.

India has received useful terror intelligence from the US. It is ridiculous to welcome such an act when it is given the anodyne name intelligence sharing and to condemn it when backward linkages of the information that is gathered are taken into account.

Those backward linkages involve spying and cyber snooping. This should shock the media the least. Practically every piece of printed news that does not stem from a press release owes its origin to violation of some established protocol to control information. Watergate got exposed because someone violated a code on official secrets. Cyber-snooping also violates established protocols.

In either case, the common weal justifies the breach of propriety. Can India afford not to gather all the information it can, by whatever means at its disposal, to prevent another attack such as on Mumbai in 2008? The point is to establish institutional oversight and accountability to ensure that such snooping is not misused, not to rule it out.

Can this be done? This is where our legislators, civil servants, experts and the media have to show diligence, imagination and integrity. If they do, the answer would be in the affirmative. Pious outrage over violation of privacy is of little avail. Constructive proposals for institutional oversight would help.