A Financial Times report claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is spying on its citizens by buying powerful surveillance tools from Israeli tech companies like Cognite and Septier.
According to the FT reportInstalled on undersea cable landing stations, the surveillance system allows Indian security agencies to spy on the personal information and communications of its 1.4 billion citizens.
Israel-based company Septier has reportedly sold its legitimate wiretapping technology to telecom groups including Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea and Singapore’s Singtel.
According to Septier’s promotional video, its technology extracts “voice, messaging services, web browsing and email correspondence” from targets.
On the other hand, another Israeli company, Cognite, also offers surveillance products in India.
In 2021, Meta claimed that Cognite was among several companies whose services were used to track journalists and politicians in several countries, but did not mention India.
The Financial Times report quoted four people who have worked on submarine cable projects in countries around the world as saying: “India is unusual in that it openly requires telecom companies to install monitoring equipment at submarine cable landing stations and data centers operated by… are approved.” the government as a condition of operation”.
Livemint could not independently confirm the report.
India is not alone in having a more permissive legal wiretapping regime. Countries like Uganda and Rwanda have similar wiretapping laws. In 2013, Snowden leaks revealed US and UK intelligence agencies engaged in mass surveillance through backdoor agreements with telecom companies.
India’s Pegasus Scandal
In 2019 and 2021, opposition party leaders, journalists and activists attacked the Modi government for using Pegasus spyware to monitor it. The Washington Post reported on Pegasus spy software, in which the English daily said it had used a link to hack cell phones and secretly recorded emails, phone calls and text messages.
