India bypasses own rules to buy Israeli phone-hacking tech

Résumé détaillé

India's expansive surveillance capabilities extend beyond cloning phones to accessing cloud-based data of tech giants.

New Delhi, India – India has exempted an Israeli phone-hacking company from New Delhi’s own rules, allowing it to sell phone-extraction products and surveillance technology to government agencies and sparking concerns and criticism from rights groups and activists.

An investigation by the digital-rights group Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) found Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, a close confidante of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, signed off on exemptions from “make in India” procurement rules, clearing the way for government forensic institutions to buy at least 422 items of foreign technology, including products made by the Israeli firm Cellebrite.

Modi’s federal government and state governments ruled by his Bharatiya Janata Party are not the only ones who bought this Israeli technology. States governed by the opposition Indian National Congress party, including Himachal Pradesh, Keralam and Karnataka, also purchased similar phone-extraction and cloning tools.

A review of documents revealed that India’s expansive surveillance capabilities extend far beyond just cloning phones and extracting data without passwords to accessing cloud-based data from social media platforms – such as Instagram, X and Tinder – as well as data from connected devices such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home.

Experts argued that India’s current laws offer no guardrails against overreaching surveillance and the data extractions happen in a legal grey zone.

“It is clear that there is an expansion of India’s surveillance capabilities and it is becoming both wider and deeper,” said Vrinda Bhandari, a lawyer in the Supreme Court who works on digital rights and privacy issues.

“It’s now easier to conduct mass surveillance rather than targeted, specific surveillance and also possible to do more intrusive surveillance,” she told Al Jazeera. “[Today,] surveillance gives you a richer picture of an individual’s life.”

The IFF reviewed a letter also seen by Al Jazeera from India’s Ministry of Home Affairs…

Und…

Début de l'article, extrait de Al Jazeera. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.