People's Democracy

Stop Collaborating with US Snooping

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) issued the following statement on August 2, 2013.

THE latest disclosures in the documents provided by American whistleblower, Edward Snowden, show that the Indian government is collaborating with the United States of America in its electronic surveillance in India.

The US has installed some 700 servers in 150 locations around the world, one of which is near New Delhi, as part of a hitherto undisclosed programme called �Xkeyscore,� under which electronic snooping is undertaken by the US�s National Security Agency. The programme is meant for searching through the vast database containing emails, online chats and browsing histories of millions of individuals.

Earlier, the government of India had justified the �snooping� in the name of tracking terrorist activity, with the external affairs minister going so far as to say that it is not snooping but only an analysis of the pattern of calls.

Now it is clear that this justificatory statement was made because the government of India itself is a collaborating partner in the global spy network of the US, which undermines the sovereignty of India. The CPI(M) deplores this action of the government.

The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) demands that the Manmohan Singh government forthwith stop collaborating with the United States in its snooping on Indian citizens and close down the electronic surveillance facilities provided to it in India.