--- layout: default title: "Security and Surveillance – Optimizing Security while Safeguarding Human Rights" description: "A January 2015 CIS blog post by Elonnai Hickok recapping a talk held by the Centre for Internet and Society on 19 December 2014, discussing surveillance, interception, security, oversight, and regulation in India as part of a joint CIS and Privacy International research project." authors: ["Elonnai Hickok"] categories: [Centre for Internet and Society, Elonnai Hickok] date: 2015-01-19 source: "Centre for Internet and Society" permalink: /elonnai/security-and-surveillance-optimizing-security-while-safeguarding-human-rights/ created: 2026-09-14 homepage_featured: true --- **"Security and Surveillance – Optimizing Security while Safeguarding Human Rights"** is a blog post by [Elonnai Hickok](/elonnai/), published by the [Centre for Internet and Society](/cis/) on 19 January 2015. The post recaps a talk held by CIS on 19 December 2014 under the same title, discussing surveillance, interception, security, oversight, and regulation in India as part of a joint research project between CIS and Privacy International, UK. ## Contents 1. [Article Details](#article-details) 2. [Full Text](#full-text) 3. [Context and Background](#context-and-background) 4. [External Link](#external-link) ## Article Details
📰 Published by:
Centre for Internet and Society
📅 Date:
19 January 2015
✍️ Author:
Elonnai Hickok
📄 Type:
Blog post (event recap)
🔗 Original Link:
Read the original post
## Full Text

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) on December 19, 2014 held a talk on "Security and Surveillance – Optimizing Security while Safeguarding Human Rights."

The talk focused on a project that is being undertaken by CIS in collaboration with Privacy International, UK. Initiated in 2014, the project seeks to study the regulatory side of surveillance and related technologies in the Indian context. The main objective of the project is to initiate dialogue on surveillance and security in India, government regulation, and the processes that go into the same. The talk saw enthusiastic participation from civil society members, policy advisors on technology, and engineering students.

During the event it was highlighted that requirements of judicial authorization, transparency and proportionality are currently lacking in the legal regime for surveillance in India, and at the same time India has a strong system of "security" that service providers must adhere to, which works towards enhancing cyber security in the country.

Discussions played out with regard to how most of the nine intelligence agencies that are authorized to intercept information in India are outside the ambit of parliamentary oversight, the RTI and the CAG, making them virtually unaccountable to the Indian public.

Another conversation focused on the sharing of information between various intelligence agencies within the country, and the fact that this area is virtually unregulated. The discussion then steered to cyber-security in general, emerging technologies used by the Government of India for surveillance, cooperative agreements for surveillance technologies that India has with other countries, the export and import of such technologies from India, and most importantly, the role of service providers in the surveillance debate, and the regulations they are subject to.

A common theme that seemed to be emerging from the discussion was that the agencies responsible for regulating information interception and surveillance in the country are shockingly unaccountable to the Indian public. As an active civil society member noted, "There is no oversight/monitoring of the agencies themselves, so there's no way anyone would even know of how many instances of surveillance or unauthorized interception have actually occurred."

The talk successfully concluded with inputs from members of the audience, and a broad consensus on the fact that the Government of India would have to adhere to stronger regulatory standards, harmonized surveillance standards, stronger export and import certification standards, etc., in order to make surveillance in India more transparent and accountable. As was stated at the talk, "We don't have a problem with the concept of surveillance per se, it has more to do with its problematic implementation."

{% include back-to-top.html %} ## Context and Background Published on 19 January 2015 under the categories Internet Governance and Privacy, this Elonnai Hickok post for the Centre for Internet and Society recaps a talk held roughly a month earlier, on 19 December 2014, that brought together civil society members, technology policy advisors, and engineering students to discuss India's surveillance accountability gap. The talk was framed around an ongoing joint research project between CIS and Privacy International, UK, initiated in 2014 to study the regulatory landscape of surveillance and related technologies in the Indian context. The discussion identified a structural tension in India's surveillance regime: while the country maintains a relatively robust technical security framework that service providers must comply with, the legal safeguards typically associated with lawful interception, namely judicial authorisation, transparency, and proportionality, were found to be largely absent. Participants noted that most of the nine Indian agencies authorised to intercept communications operate outside the reach of parliamentary oversight, the Right to Information Act, and the Comptroller and Auditor General, leaving their surveillance activities effectively unmonitored and unaccountable. The conversation also touched on inter-agency intelligence sharing, which participants described as virtually unregulated, as well as India's cooperative technology arrangements with other countries and the export and import controls governing surveillance equipment. The post closes on a broad consensus among attendees that stronger and more harmonised regulatory standards, alongside tighter export and import certification requirements, were necessary to make Indian surveillance practices more transparent and accountable, with one participant's framing, that the issue lies not with the concept of surveillance but with its problematic implementation, capturing the tenor of the discussion. ## External Link - [Security and Surveillance – Optimizing Security while Safeguarding Human Rights](https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/security-and-surveillance-optimizing-security-while-safeguarding-human-rights) on CIS website {% include navbox-elonnai.html %}