Congress targets Narendra Modi, demands probe on snooping

New Delhi: Narendra Modi “does not deserve” to be the BJP’s PM candidate if the Cobrapost claim on illegal spying on a woman architect in Gujarat in 2009 is found to be correct, Congress women leaders said here on Sunday, demanding an inquiry into the issue by a Supreme Court judge.

Union ministers Girija Vyas and Jayanthi Natarajan, former Uttar Padesh Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi and Mahila Congress chief Shobha Oza said the honour and dignity of every woman in India was at stake in the backdrop of “serious issue in which a young woman was stalked, followed, spied upon on during her every waking act by no less than an entire anti-terror squad of the Gujarat police”.

“If government machinery is misused... then obviously, Modi has no moral and political right to govern Gujarat... He does not deserve to be the PM candidate of the BJP,” Joshi said while addressing a joint press conference along with Dr Vyas, Natarajan and Oza at the AICC headquarters.

Bahuguna said BJP chief Rajnath Singh has himself “unravelled the mystery” behind who is the “Saheb” of former Gujarat home minister Amit Shah, by making it clear that it was Modi.

Two investigative portals, Cobrapost and Gulail, had claimed on November 15 that Amit Shah, who is Modi’s close aide, had ordered illegal surveillance of a woman at the behest of one 'saheb'.

They had released taped conversation between Shah and an IPS officer to back up their claim, adding that its authenticity could not be confirmed. The women leaders asked, “Does this illegal snooping not raise moral and ethical issues as to capability, mannerism and style of governance of Modi?”

Next: Snooping in India on the rise

Snooping in India on the rise

New Delhi: In signs of growing Internet snooping by the enforcement authorities, India made an average about 15 requests per day to Google to access personal web details of users during January-June this year.

In terms of the number of requests for web user details during the first half of 2013, India is next to only the US, which made 66 requests a day on an average — the highest for any country, as per Google’s latest Transparency Report.

The US made a total of 10,918 such requests to Google during January-June 2013, followed by India’s 2,691, Germany’s 2,311, France’s 2,011 and the UK’s 1,274 and Brazil’s 1,239.

Total requests rose by 24 per cent to 25,879 in the first half of this year from 20,938 in the year-ago period. Compared to July-December 2012 it was up 21 per cent. The search engine giant had received 21,389 requests from governments during the period.

In case of India, the number of user data requests rose by 16 per cent to 2,691 in January-June this year from 2,319 in the same period in 2012. Compared to July-December 2012 (2,431 requests) such requests were up by 11 per cent.

The number of user acco-unts associated with such requests rose from 4,106 in the second half of 2012 to 4,161 in January-June 2013. The user accounts stood at 3,467 in the first six months of 2012.

Google publishes data for requests about user details, as also for removal of content on its various platforms, including search, images and YouTube, on a six-month basis. The company regularly receives requests from governments and courts around the world to hand over user data and the number of such requests have incr-eased with growing usage of its services every year.

The report also comes close on the heels of technology firms coming under pressure following revelations of a secret US Gover-nment programme which scoops up data from these Internet companies.

Tech firms, including Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo!, have been seeking to release more info on Government data requests, in the belief that it would reassure their customers.