NETRA means eye in “Hindi” language, will be soon launched by the Indian government for monitoring the internet traffic entering and leaving the country. NETRA will be Indian Intelligence for internet surveillance equivalent to PRISM in the US or GCHQ in the UK.
Indian Center of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), a lab branched under Department of Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is still working on ‘NETRA’ to make it a powerful program similar to the foreign intelligence of UK or the US. This is planned to help the government combat illegal trades, reduce terror and various other issues that’s hindering the developing country for the developing economy.
“The home ministry is giving finishing touches to ‘Netra’, which will be deployed by all security agencies to capture any dubious voice traffic passing through software like Skype or Google Talk, besides write-ups in tweets, status updates, emails, instant messaging transcripts, internet calls, blogs and forums” says – TOI
TOI further says An inter-ministerial group, comprising officials of the Cabinet secretariat, home ministry, DRDO, CAIR, Intelligence Bureau, C-DoT and Computer Emergency Response Team ( CERT-In) recently have discussed the deployment strategy of “Netra”.
The group also chalked-out a strategy on how to deal with computer security incidents, track system vulnerabilities and promote effective IT security practices across the country.
Privacy laws are yet to be defined in India and its in its initial stages.
