'Netra' Is Indian Government's Internet Spy System That Does Your Network's Traffic Analysis

The Government of India will soon launch 'Netra' - a NEtwork TRaffic Analysis system for Internet surveillance for the Defence Ministry. The primary purpose of the system will be detect words like 'attack', 'bomb', 'blast' or 'kill' from a lot of sources over the Internet. Now, Traffic analysis means the process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication. It can be performed even when the messages are encrypted and cannot be decrypted. So, beware of what you type and share online, because with such Internet surveillance system in place, all your tweets, status updates, emails, instant messages, internet calls, blogs and forums - will be tapped. In fact, the system will also be able to capture any dubious voice traffic passing through software such as Skype or Google Talk.

To be deployed soon, NETRA is a software network developed by India's Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), a Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) laboratory, and is used by the Intelligence Bureau, India's domestic intelligence agency, and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the country's external intelligence agency to intercept and analyse internet traffic using pre-defined filters. The Netra is an Indian, light-weight, autonomous UAV for surveillance and reconnaissance operations. It has been jointly developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation's Research and Development Establishment (R&DE), and IdeaForge, a Mumbai-based private firm.

Internet_surveillance

Netra can be launched from a small clearing, and it can fly up to a distance of 2.5 km from its take-off point. The operational altitude of the UAV is 200 m. With an on-board wireless transmitter, it can carry out surveillance in an area of 1.5 km Line of Sight (LOS) at the height of 300 m, for 30 minutes on a single battery charge. DRDO Scientist Dr. G. Athithan of CAIR and his team were awarded the 'Agni award for excellence in self-reliance 2008' for developing NETRA. The team comprised scientists from Indian Institute of Science, G.Ravindra and Rahul M. Kharge

Now, monitoring Internet traffic on a real-time basis has become a must for Government of India as measure taken against the rapidly escalating threats posed by terrorist and criminal elements using data communication, which had brought service providers like BlackBerry, Skype and Gmail into the focus of law enforcement agencies. The NETRA system with RAW, analyses large amount of international data which crosses through the internet networks in India. Three security agencies, which include the IB and RAW, have each been allotted a maximum of 300 Gigabytes (GB) for storing intercepted internet traffic, and an extra 100 GB is assigned to the remaining law enforcement agencies.

The debate is - Whether your Internet traffic being constantly monitored is something that appeals to the masses? What is your stand on Netra being employed for surveillance of your conversations? Share your thoughts in replies below.

Replies

  • Sarathkumar Chandrasekaran
    Sarathkumar Chandrasekaran
    I have two views:
    1) if we are not doing any mischief works, we shouldn't fear on this surveillance .
    2) First tell them to tap lines of all politicians which can solve many problems.
  • Kaustubh Katdare
    Kaustubh Katdare
    I really don't get the logic behind these surveillance programs. Even with all the resources and engineering talent; Google still relies heavily on text based content. If the security folks really want to 'know' everything - they will have to develop complex algorithms that can extract all the relevant information from audio, photo and video files. Now one can easily fool these systems by changing tone, accent, adding background noise et al which can be understood by human brain only.

    The only way to enhance security is to make sure that human surveillance is in place. It will take humans to control humans; at least for the next 10-15 years (I hope).
  • Kanagasundaram Kuppusamy
    Kanagasundaram Kuppusamy
    netra prove the indian scientist hardwork and talent.this project is useful to prevent the nations valuable data from cyber hakers.Thanks lot for given a wonderful technews to all
  • yogi.bharadwaj
    yogi.bharadwaj
    Ankita Katdare
    The Government of India will soon launch 'Netra' - a NEtwork TRaffic Analysis system for Internet surveillance for the Defence Ministry. The primary purpose of the system will be detect words like 'attack', 'bomb', 'blast' or 'kill' from a lot of sources over the Internet. Now, Traffic analysis means the process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication. It can be performed even when the messages are encrypted and cannot be decrypted. So, beware of what you type and share online, because with such Internet surveillance system in place, all your tweets, status updates, emails, instant messages, internet calls, blogs and forums - will be tapped. In fact, the system will also be able to capture any dubious voice traffic passing through software such as Skype or Google Talk.

    To be deployed soon, NETRA is a software network developed by India's Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), a Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) laboratory, and is used by the Intelligence Bureau, India's domestic intelligence agency, and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the country's external intelligence agency to intercept and analyse internet traffic using pre-defined filters. The Netra is an Indian, light-weight, autonomous UAV for surveillance and reconnaissance operations. It has been jointly developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation's Research and Development Establishment (R&DE), and IdeaForge, a Mumbai-based private firm.

    Internet_surveillance

    Netra can be launched from a small clearing, and it can fly up to a distance of 2.5 km from its take-off point. The operational altitude of the UAV is 200 m. With an on-board wireless transmitter, it can carry out surveillance in an area of 1.5 km Line of Sight (LOS) at the height of 300 m, for 30 minutes on a single battery charge. DRDO Scientist Dr. G. Athithan of CAIR and his team were awarded the 'Agni award for excellence in self-reliance 2008' for developing NETRA. The team comprised scientists from Indian Institute of Science, G.Ravindra and Rahul M. Kharge

    Now, monitoring Internet traffic on a real-time basis has become a must for Government of India as measure taken against the rapidly escalating threats posed by terrorist and criminal elements using data communication, which had brought service providers like BlackBerry, Skype and Gmail into the focus of law enforcement agencies. The NETRA system with RAW, analyses large amount of international data which crosses through the internet networks in India. Three security agencies, which include the IB and RAW, have each been allotted a maximum of 300 Gigabytes (GB) for storing intercepted internet traffic, and an extra 100 GB is assigned to the remaining law enforcement agencies.

    The debate is - Whether your Internet traffic being constantly monitored is something that appeals to the masses? What is your stand on Netra being employed for surveillance of your conversations? Share your thoughts in replies below.
    its good but i think attack kill these words are very common internet then how could it be defined the bad or good .
  • ahmed sarfraz
    ahmed sarfraz
    let me make one thing clear, even if there is an algorithm which can easily find out an encrypted word and it's location, what is the chance or the % that the word it finds is the exact which the sender has written is the exact word which they are trying to find. Say there is some one who has written a word XYZ and encryption thought that XYZ is a word for BOMB, now whats the fault of the person who wrote XYZ without having any intention of writing BOMB
  • ahmed sarfraz
    ahmed sarfraz
    plus the Indian system is that much great that even if a person has not done anything wrong, they make him accept that he has done wrong by hook or by crook. 😛

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