NETRA: India’s planned Orwellian surveillance system

Anyone know more?

Udhay

http://notacoda.net/2014/09/05/netra-indias-planned-orwellian-surveillance-system/

NETRA: India’s planned Orwellian surveillance system
Friday, 5 September, 2014 · by notacoda

Overview

NETRA (from the Sanskrit word नेत्र (netra), meaning “eye,” and a
convenient ‘backronym’ for Network Traffic Analysis) is India’s planned
Internet monitoring system. There have been no public comments by
India’s executive leadership on NETRA, no statements have been made in
Parliament that detail the system and no public literature exists that
describe it. Until it is publicly acknowledged by a senior elected
representative, it will remain a secretive surveillance measure. Except
for a few news reports (for instance, here and here) crediting an
anonymous bureaucratic source, all of which are substantially similar,
no public information about NETRA exists.

From the few news reports quoting the anonymous source, whose
credibility is not publicly known, NETRA appears to be a keyword-based
detection, monitoring, and pattern-recognition system for packetized
data and voice traffic over the Internet. This means that it will cover
most forms of electronic communications, including emails, tweets, blog
posts, status updates, VoIP calls, instant messages, and so on. It will
utilise deep packet inspection (DPI) software at several installed nodes
at Internet Service Provider (ISP) locations across India. At the
outset, there appears to be a functional overlap with at least a few
aspects of the Central Monitoring System (CMS). The CMS is purported to
be an automated telephone interception mechanism that requires the
installation of interception, storage, and forwarding (ISF) servers at
Telephone Service Provider (TSP) locations. The ISF servers will perform
DPI to effect interceptions of packetized voice data since many voice
communications are no longer streamed over a circuit-switched network
(PSTN), although most are subsequently packetized. Netra is also the
official name of an Indian aerial surveillance drone.

NETRA is being developed by a laboratory of the Defence R&D Organisation
(DRDO) called the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
(CAIR). In a selection trial conducted by the Ministry of Home Affairs,
NETRA was favoured over a competing solution offered by the secretive
National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), India’s primary signals
and technical intelligence agency, which does not have a website, and
which recently separated from the primary external intelligence agency –
the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). NTRO’s offering was developed by
Paladion, a private, Indian-promoted, information security company.
Besides reportedly being buggy, the involvement of private companies
over which it is more difficult to impose secrecy resulted in NTRO’s
defeat and NETRA’s selection.

<SNIP, more at the URL>

-- 
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))

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