Indian government launches spy system

2014-01-07

Helen Martin

Virus Bulletin, UK

Editor: Helen Martin

Abstract

Indian government announces Internet surveillance system.

Move over NSA, the Indian government is launching its own Internet surveillance system. The ‘Netra’ Internet spy system was developed by the country’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) under the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and is capable of picking up the use of key words (e.g. ‘bomb’, ‘blast’, ‘kill’, ‘attack’ and so on) in emails, blog posts and social media status updates. The system can also capture suspicious voice traffic passing thorough VoIP services such as Skype and Google Talk. According to The Times of India, a government official said: ‘When Netra is operationalized, security agencies will get a big handle on monitoring [the] activities of dubious people and organisations which use the Internet to carry out their nefarious designs.’

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