NEW DELHI: India
has authorized 10 federal government agencies to intercept and monitor
information from any computer, a move opposition parties said on Friday risked
creating a "surveillance state". The interior ministry said late on
Thursday the agencies could "intercept, monitor and decrypt any
information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer"
under an Information Technology Act.

"For the
nation's security, these agencies have been made accountable so that no one
else can do these activities," Ravi Shankar Prasad, minister for law and
justice and information technology, told reporters on Friday. The agencies
given the powers include the Research and Analysis Wing, the main foreign-intelligence
gathering body, the Intelligence Bureau, which focuses on internal operations,
the National Investigation Agency, responsible for anti-militant activity, the
financial crime fighting Enforcement Directorate, the Narcotics Control Bureau
and tax investigators. They would need approval from the senior-most civil
servant in the interior ministry to carry out such surveillance.

But opposition
parties led by the Congress party, which governed before Prime Minister
Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, said the
government had introduced the powers "by stealth", without a debate
in parliament. The government was attacking citizens' right to privacy, they
said. "The BJP government is converting India into a surveillance state,"
former federal minister and Congress leader Anand Sharma told reporters,
flanked by politicians from many opposition parties. "We collectively
oppose it because this gives unlimited powers to all these agencies to monitor
every information, to intercept and complete surveillance which is unacceptable
in our democracy."

The Supreme Court
last year recognized the right to privacy as a fundamental right, and in
September it reined in a government push to make a biometric identity system
known as Aadhar mandatory for such things as banking and telecom services.
"The ministry has taken a regressive step by delegating powers to
different agencies. This is dangerous because there is no independent oversight
of the way interception is carried out," lawyer and privacy activist Raman
Chima said. - Reuters