4 ms·

India among top targets of spying by NSA

19 points by r0h1n 13y ago

r0h1n 13y ago
> Asked by The Hindu why a friendly country like India was subjected to so much surveillance by the U.S., a spokesman of the U.S. government’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence said: “The U.S. government will respond through diplomatic channels to our partners and allies. While we are not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity, as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations. We value our cooperation with all countries on issues of mutual concern.”The DNI spokesman chose not to respond to questions about how the NSA managed to pick so much data from India — 13.5 billion pieces of information in just one month — especially from its telephone networks, and about whether it had received the cooperation of Indian telecom companies.
- samstave 13y ago
  I'd speculate that India was targeted given the ratio of Indian nationals in the tech industry. Maybe they are easier to blackmail into assets for the NSA, or it could just be simply due to numbers... but given that there are so many Indian engineers with H1Bs - it would be utterly incredible if we were to see a leak where an H1B recipient was "handled" through coercion by "You'll get this H1B if..."
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
Flagged. Why wouldn't an intelligence service target a second-most-populous nuclear-armed space-faring nation? That's as much a revelation as the Pope being Catholic. Please stop with the manufactured NSA "news" stories.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  Oh, pardon me for thinking it was news that a foreign country (incidentally and in your same vein, also the most militarized one; the only nuclear arms user in history; and inveterate meddler in the affairs of countries around the world) thinks it perfectly fine to indiscriminately spy on the citizens of a friendly country. By arm twisting companies like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft for whom India is a large market. Or by stealthily wiretapping our telecom networks. And since this is as much news to you as "the Pope being Catholic", I assume you'll be perfectly fine if it emerged that, oh, Indian intelligence agencies were spying on all US citizens by secretly arm-twisting the IT services companies and BPOs that work for most US corporations and even many govt agencies? No? Lemme guess, that is totally different. Because you're a US citizen?
  - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
    > you'll be perfectly fine if it emerged that, oh, Indian intelligence agencies were spying on all US citizens by secretly arm-twisting the IT services companies and BPOs that work for most US corporations and even many govt agencies? Yes. Indian spies do exactly that. IT workers are heavily background checked and audited for precisely this reason. File storage is partitioned and encrypted for precisely this reason. Your entire train of thought is naive and childish. Spying promotes stability and safety. Because you know much of the truth in advance, you can give other countries the benefit of the doubt when surprises occur. Consider what would happen if your retarded dream came true: the U.S. stopped so unfairly spying on the noble, just Indians. Then a nuclear bomb goes off in Kashmir, or some similar unpredictable act of insanity. The U.S. would be forced to assume the worst, go to a high alert status, and begin gearing up for a massive war just in case. Ignorance is suicide.

19 points by r0h1n 13y ago

r0h1n 13y ago

> Asked by The Hindu why a friendly country like India was subjected to so much surveillance by the U.S., a spokesman of the U.S. government’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence said: “The U.S. government will respond through diplomatic channels to our partners and allies. While we are not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity, as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations. We value our cooperation with all countries on issues of mutual concern.”The DNI spokesman chose not to respond to questions about how the NSA managed to pick so much data from India — 13.5 billion pieces of information in just one month — especially from its telephone networks, and about whether it had received the cooperation of Indian telecom companies.

samstave 13y ago
I'd speculate that India was targeted given the ratio of Indian nationals in the tech industry. Maybe they are easier to blackmail into assets for the NSA, or it could just be simply due to numbers... but given that there are so many Indian engineers with H1Bs - it would be utterly incredible if we were to see a leak where an H1B recipient was "handled" through coercion by "You'll get this H1B if..."
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

Daniel_Newby 13y ago

Flagged. Why wouldn't an intelligence service target a second-most-populous nuclear-armed space-faring nation? That's as much a revelation as the Pope being Catholic. Please stop with the manufactured NSA "news" stories.

r0h1n 13y ago
Oh, pardon me for thinking it was news that a foreign country (incidentally and in your same vein, also the most militarized one; the only nuclear arms user in history; and inveterate meddler in the affairs of countries around the world) thinks it perfectly fine to indiscriminately spy on the citizens of a friendly country. By arm twisting companies like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft for whom India is a large market. Or by stealthily wiretapping our telecom networks. And since this is as much news to you as "the Pope being Catholic", I assume you'll be perfectly fine if it emerged that, oh, Indian intelligence agencies were spying on all US citizens by secretly arm-twisting the IT services companies and BPOs that work for most US corporations and even many govt agencies? No? Lemme guess, that is totally different. Because you're a US citizen?
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  > you'll be perfectly fine if it emerged that, oh, Indian intelligence agencies were spying on all US citizens by secretly arm-twisting the IT services companies and BPOs that work for most US corporations and even many govt agencies? Yes. Indian spies do exactly that. IT workers are heavily background checked and audited for precisely this reason. File storage is partitioned and encrypted for precisely this reason. Your entire train of thought is naive and childish. Spying promotes stability and safety. Because you know much of the truth in advance, you can give other countries the benefit of the doubt when surprises occur. Consider what would happen if your retarded dream came true: the U.S. stopped so unfairly spying on the noble, just Indians. Then a nuclear bomb goes off in Kashmir, or some similar unpredictable act of insanity. The U.S. would be forced to assume the worst, go to a high alert status, and begin gearing up for a massive war just in case. Ignorance is suicide.