New Delhi: India’s “so-called lawful interception monitoring systems” are helping provide the “backdoor” that allows “prime minister Narendra Modi’s government to snoop on its 1.4bn citizens, part of the country’s growing surveillance regime”, reports The Financial Times.The prestigious London-based financial daily tracks how India mandates that telecommunication networks install hardware “to search, copy and pump that data to Indian security agencies on demand, with the help of AI and data analytics”. This hardware is meant to be attached to “subsea cable landing stations that have proliferated around India’s coast.” It is these cables that make global communications between India and the rest of the world possible in the digital age. This, it finds, is fuelling and helping private companies that sell powerful surveillance tools.The companies FT identifies include Indian providers such as Vehere, “as well as less well known Israeli groups like Cognyte or Septier.” The profile and track-record of some of these companies have raised serious concerns.Septier was among companies termed a “potentially irresponsible proliferator” by the Atlantic Council in 2021, which it meant as those companies “willing to accept or ignore the risk that their products will bolster the capabilities of client governments that might wish to threaten US/Nato national security or harm marginalised populations”. Septier called this “pure speculation” at the time, as per the report.India’s case is unusual and an exception to most other democracies, as it requires “telecom companies to install surveillance equipment at subsea cable landing stations and data centres that is approved by the government as a condition of operation.”After the Snowden tapes created a storm, revealing how intelligence agencies in the US and UK were engaged in mass surveillance via backdoor arrangements, telecom companies have pushed back on government pressure “to install official backdoors providing unfettered access to customer data.” They have preferred to demand a court-approved warrant for targeted interception, as and when governments have made requests for surveillance.India finds itself amongst countries like Uganda and Rwanda, who have similar interception laws. But, remarks FT, the scale of India’s telecoms usage has zoomed in recent years. Projections of wireless data usage are up “from an average of 1.24GB per person a month in 2018 to over 14GB.”The companies we keepSeptier is an Israel-based company. Founded in 2000, has sold its lawful interception technology to telecoms groups including Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio, the Vodafone Idea Indian joint venture and Singapore’s Singtel.Israel-based Cognyte, is cited as another leading provider of surveillance products in India.Vehere, jointly headquartered in India and the US, is also mentioned as a company relevant in this context. It advertises its “state of the art monitoring solution” that helps telecom companies “fulfil their legal obligation to intercept calls and data while maintaining maximum privacy protection”, says FT.The Financial Times contacted the government of India, Cognyte, Vehere, Reliance Jio and Singtel for comments, but says they did not respond. Vodafone Idea said it “remains strictly compliant to licensing conditions mandated by [the] government of India and the prevailing regulations in force at any given time”.Broader concernsConcerns about India’s surveillance regime have multiplied since reports about India deploying the Pegasus spyware of Israeli group NSO, “triggering a political scandal when the hacking tool was found on the phones of journalists and activists in 2019 and 2021.”In July 2021, 16 international news organisations including The Wire, the French media non-profit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International came together to expose the use of this spyware – which the NSO Group said it only sold to governments – was used across the world, including in India.The personal data protection bill passed in this monsoon session of Parliament has been criticised for being one that protects governments from scrutiny and not citizens, providing legal cover for surveillance. Critics and activists say, “the government’s favourite catchphrase ‘as may be prescribed’ is the highlight of this DPDP Act. It has been used 28 times in a 21-page Act with 44 sections. The ambiguity has been kept so that the government can take arbitrary decisions.”