The Washington Post has put out new documents showing that America's National Security Agency (NSA) spied on close to 193 countries and organisations across the world, including India. The BJP was also on the list of organisations/political parties that were spied upon, according to the documents.
The US allegedly allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on six non-US political parties, including the BJP, claims former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden in leaked top-secret documents, according to The Washington Post. Other's on the list include Pakistan People's Party and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood as well.
The Indian government and the BJP have expressed their dismay about this revelation and according to various news reports will raise the matter with the United States. According to a Times of India report, "the government is likely to either summon the US envoy here or register a 'strong protest' in Washington through ambassador S Jaishankar."
The report adds that initially the government response to these reports was to exercise caution as it tried to determine the authenticity of the story. "But the government seemed to have realised later in the day — after it was convinced of the authenticity of the report first published in The Washington Post — that the matter couldn't be glossed over given its political ramifications," says the TOI report.
According to Hindustan Times, which quotes a senior government official as saying, "India considers it highly objectionable. And we will certainly raise the matter with the US." The External affairs ministry spokesperson said it was "extremely disconcerting that privacy laws in India" were undermined, adds the report.
BJP's IT cell head Arvind Gupta told HT, "It is matter of concern because it deals with interfering in the democratic process of a sovereign nation."
While the documents list the BJP as one of the organisations for which NSA got the required certification approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) it's not clear if the spying was actually carried out. NSA needs approval from FISA to spy on entities outside the US. The orders to spy on BJP were given in 2010, just four months before Obama's visit to India.
The recent Washington Post documents are also part of the disclosures made by Edward Snowden, the spy who went rogue against the NSA. This is not the first report to highlight that India was on the list of countries spied upon by the NSA. Last year aGuardian report based on Snowden's disclosures had revealed that India was the fifth most spied country by NSA on the list with 6.3 billion reports on it. The report said that NSA used a data-mining tool, called Boundless Informant, which details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.
It was also revealed that Indian Embassy in the US was spied upon. Salman Khurshid who was the foreign minister at the time had dismissed the allegations then and said, "I don't think we should be raising it to such a high level... that it becomes a matter of serious question."
But for the Modi government, the issue is clearly a serious one. Given that Modi has been trying to reach out to the US (which had banned him from entering that country post the Godhra riots), the recent revelations that Obama allowed NSA to spy on his party aren't going to make for an easy discussion.
