The surveillance scene

Published : Mar 31, 2001 00:00 IST

A run-down on currently available surveillance and counter-surveillance technologies and their applications, in the context of the Tehelka operation.

SPIES, unlike Tehelka's team of journalists, would not really have needed to enter Defence Minister George Fernandes' home to find out just what was happening there. Using equipment available off the shelf, such as long-range parabolic microphones and sh otgun microphones, they could have picked up conversations sitting in a hotel room 1,500 metres away, even through a 50 cm thick wall. Each time Fernandes picked up a cordless or cellular telephone to speak to officials, electronic devices costing just a few thousand dollars would have allowed the spies to listen in. And if they were equipped with state-of-the-art emission detection equipment, the spies could have read each line of text typed out on the computers at the Defence Ministry.

Tehelka's sting operation has shaken up India's intelligence establishment, and not for the obvious reasons. It has illustrated just how vulnerable defence and strategic establishments are to professional surveillance, and shown up the dismal state of co unter-surveillance infrastructure.

In the world of modern surveillance technology, the miniature cameras used by Tehelka lie at the bottom end of the scale. Spybase, an online surveillance technology vendor, sells products like the VidLink 100 video transmitter system for as little as $39 9 (about Rs.18,800). Fitting into any object the size of a cigarette box, the VidLink transmits video signals from its miniature camera up to 1.6 km away, where they can then be recorded on tape. An amateur version of the VidLink is available for just $1 79 (about Rs.8,400) and allows for video transmission over some 250 m. High resolution systems are also commercially available. U.S.-based Communications Control Systems (CCS) sells a video camera fitted in a pen, with a lens just 3.6 mm in diameter, whi ch can record colour images in just 0.5 Lux of brightness.

Systems like these have been widely used abroad, both by journalists and law-enforcement organisations, as well as for commercial espionage. A corporation might, for example, record the payment of bribes to politicians in order to prevent them from reneg ing on an agreement. Miniature cameras and video transmitters, concealed in devices as diverse as desktop clocks, electrical plugs, door knobs or even hollowed-out books, are routinely used to monitor employees in rooms where sensitive information is kep t. Despite a fair level of information on such surveillance methods being available, criminals continue to be caught on camera. The producers of a recent British Broadcasting Corporation programme used covert cameras to blow the lid of trafficking in eas tern European women. Police forces routinely use cameras fitted inside car radio antennae to keep suspects under surveillance. "All this is seen as essential equipment," says security equipment dealer Ajay Gupta, "not as expensive toys."

Why, then, have we not seen explicit images of corruption and narratives of scandal emerge from elsewhere in the world? The simple answer is that these techniques will not work in developed countries. Any office or home where sensitive material is stored , or secrets are discussed, would be protected with modern counter-surveillance devices that would detect any electronic intrusions. One major counter-surveillance tool consists of systems that can detect any transmissions, through a full range of 5 mega hertz to over 4 gigahertz. The minute a covert camera is turned on, for example, the counter-surveillance equipment would detect its activation. Users would also be alerted to the presence of any audio or video transmitter concealed in fixed devices plan ted inside a room. Kits are available to detect the covert use of audio and video recorders.

State-of-the-art equipment can feed false signals to those listening in, allowing images of bribe-taking, for example, to be replaced with innocuous footage. Other technologies exist to alert users that their telephones are being tapped. CCS' B-411, for example, monitors telephone lines for any changes in the electrical parameters, of the kind caused by transmitters, extension phones, or even plain tape recorders. The B-411 then generates a masking tone that makes eavesdropping difficult. Devices to pre vent other kinds of surveillance are again available commercially. Audio jammers, which generate random noise, are available for around $100, and provide a high level of protection against microphones and tape recorders. Each jammer can protect conversat ions taking place within a 100 square metre room. Special shielding equipment is available to protect rooms from microphone surveillance.

Organisations in advanced countries, official and corporate ones, go to extraordinary lengths to protect their secrets. Telephone, fax and e-mail correspondence is, for instance, routinely encrypted. This provides users of counter-surveillance technology another layer of defence should their systems fail to alert them to bugs. A variety of devices are commercially available, ranging from cheap gadgets that distort voices, to full-scale encryption equipment. Anyone listening in to an encrypted telephone or radio conversation would hear only gibberish. Sadly, very few Indian establishments use encryption routinely. While the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) have secured some key voice and fax lines, many communications, includ ing satellite telephones, remain unencrypted. That means anyone armed with a frequency scanner, or even just some copper wire, screwdrivers and ingenuity, can listen in to sensitive conversations.

New technology can resemble science fiction. Since the early 1980s, the intelligence community has been discussing technologies to protect the surveillance of emissions from computer monitors and printers. Technology exists to read this kind of text from up to 3 km away, using the electronic emissions generated by computers. The United States security establishment has rigorous standards, code-named Tempest, to protect these kinds of surveillance. Other standards, reportedly codenamed Nonstop and Hijack , exist to prevent the transmission of signals from radio frequency devices such as cellphones, pagers and cordless phones. German computer magazines reported in 1991 that authorities processing sensitive data in that country were required to use only Te mpest-protected devices approved by ZfCH, Germany's Central Office for Encipherment. Ericsson is believed to be the market leader for such special computer security screens.

EVER since espionage began, code-breakers have been constantly at war with code-makers. Any technology to ensure secrecy is immediately challenged by counter-technologies, which are in turn beaten by new secrecy tools. Experts, however, believe that the war is finally being won by the code-makers. Simon Singh, the author of The Code Book, has suggested that the advent of quantum cryptography would make it theoretically and practically impossible to decipher an encrypted conversation.

Concerns about the intelligence establishment's communication security have been voiced for several years now. The May 2000 report of the official task force on the intelligence apparatus (see separate story) noted the need for the Intelligence Bureau to possess "a reliable and safe communications capability". The report said: "Many of the hostile groups operating within the country currently benefit from the expertise of foreign intelligence services, and are able not only to latch on to frequencies, b ut can can also demodulate RF (radio frequency) transmissions that have been modulated and remodulated after transmission." "Almost all messages," the report concluded, "now need to be encrypted, and online encryption is a dire necessity." The report has been accepted by the Central government, but it is anyone's guess how long it will be before such major technological upgradation comes about.

Interestingly, one form of unbreakable encryption, based on what are known as one-time cipher pads, has existed for almost a century. A one-time cipher consists of replacing characters or digits with a randomly generated alternative. The hotline between the Presidents of the U.S. and Russia apparently use these pads, but the costs of generating genuinely random characters, and the difficulties involved in regularly disseminating pads, render the use of this method impractical for everyday use.

Big Brother is listening, but Indian intelligence officials are curiously blase about electronic surveillance. The U.S.-run Project Echelon can intercept almost all e-mail and fax correspondence and telephone conversations, using a network of satellites and earth-based receivers. The interception of conversations between Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf and the Chief of General Staff, Lt. Gen. Mohd. Aziz Khan during the Kargil war would not have been possible had both sides used encryp tion. Technologies like Rivest-Adelman-Shamir (RSA), based on one-way algorithms, provide for near-unbreakable encrypted communication. The U.S. has imposed severe restrictions on the export of strong encryption software, but some products based on RSA t echnology, like the now-legendary e-mail encryption software PGP, are available for download from servers outside that country. Strong encryption necessitates enormous computer resources to decode, of the kind that can stretch the abilities even of the N ational Security Agency of the U.S.

Organisations like the RAW do possess significant technological capabilities, including equipment to sweep important installations for bugs and to protect communications from interception. The organisation, sources say, also has considerable capability t o intercept telephone conversations. Military Intelligence, for its part, has formidable capabilities to decrypt enemy communications and gather intelligence by prowling the air waves. Such technology, however, is closely guarded, and finds little system -wide application. Visitors to top intelligence establishments and the Defence Ministry face only physical frisking, designed to detect not sophisticated surveillance tools but weapons. Any half-competent spy with access to any of these establishments wo uld have little difficulty planting bugs, or taping conversations, or filming documents. Even rooms which house ciphering equipment are rarely shielded from the prospect of an electronic attack.

If Tehelka's investigative team members had instead been espionage agents, the consequences would have been calamitous for the country. None of the conversations of the Defence Minister would have been confidential. India's nuclear secrets, its defence a cquisitions, its inner workings: all these would have been transparent. Decisions made in the offices of top military officials would have been known to India's enemies even as they were being made.

For all we know, this is already the case. Almost all of India's top officials receive civilian visitors, and there appears to be little regular audit of what they might have left behind. That Tehelka could record on tape politicians unconnected with def ence is cause for nothing except sadness. That they could penetrate high-security offices with such ease underlines the urgent need to upgrade the technological resources available to India's defence and intelligence organisations.

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