Bharat Rakshak

Pratyush wrote:What New Delhi should learn from the Nairobi terror attack

Jhujar wrote:Folks, VK Singh just confirmed what i have been saying for the last 10 plus years.


Vijay Kumar Singh ‏@Gen_VKSingh 21 Sep They have already destroyed various institutions. Are now chipping at last resort of Nation, the Army and sadly some of our own helping them
Retweeted by RajeshA@BRFThinktank

Snowden’s files show billions of pieces of phone & internet data plucked

Among the BRICS group of emerging nations, which featured quite high on the list of countries targeted by the secret surveillance programs of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) for collecting telephone data and internet records, India was the number one target of snooping by the American agency.

In the overall list of countries spied on by NSA programs, India stands at fifth place, with billions of pieces of information plucked from its telephone and internet networks just in 30 days.

According to top-secret documents provided to The Hindu by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the American agency carried out intelligence gathering activities in India using at least two major programs: the first one is Boundless Informant, a data-mining system which keeps track of how many calls and emails are collected by the security agency; and the second one is PRISM, a program which intercepts and collects actual content from the networks. While Boundless Informant was used for monitoring telephone calls and access to the internet in India, PRISM collected information about certain specific issues — not related to terrorism — through Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, YouTube and several other web-based services.

Asked by The Hindu why a friendly country like India was subjected to so much surveillance by the U.S., a spokesman of the U.S. government’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence said: “The U.S. government will respond through diplomatic channels to our partners and allies. While we are not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity, as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations. We value our cooperation with all countries on issues of mutual concern.”The DNI spokesman chose not to respond to questions about how the NSA managed to pick so much data from India — 13.5 billion pieces of information in just one month — especially from its telephone networks, and about whether it had received the cooperation of Indian telecom companies.

Though top Indian officials have been rather dismissive of the disclosures, with Minister for External Affairs Salman Khurshid even defending the U.S. surveillance program by saying that “it is not… actually snooping,” the NSA documents obtained by The Hindu show that Boundless Informant not only keeps track of emails and calls collected by the NSA, it is also used by the agency to give its managers summaries of the intelligence it gathers worldwide, thus making it the foundation of the global surveillance programs created by the world’s biggest and most secretive intelligence agency.

This SIGINT (signal intelligence) system collects electronic surveillance program records or internet data (DNI) and telephone call metadata records (DNR), which is all stored in an NSA archive called GM-PLACE.

Boundless Informant summarises data records from 504 separate DNR and DNI collection sources called SIGADs, the documents show.

Collection of metadata is serious business. Several Information Technology experts The Hindu spoke to said a detailed account of an individual’s private and professional life can be constructed from metadata, which is actually the record of phone number of every caller and recipient; the unique serial number of the phones involved; the time and duration of each phone call; and potentially the location of each caller and recipient at the time of the call. The same applies to e-mails and other Internet activities of an individual. The high volume of metadata taken from India — 6.2 billion in just one month — means that the U.S. agency collected information on millions of calls, messages and emails every day within India, or between India and a foreign country.

The information collected is part of a bigger surveillance system.

According to a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) memo, an “Unclassified” and “For Official Use Only” document which has been obtained by The Hindu, Boundless Informant is a tool of the NSA’s Global Access Operations (GAO), whose motto is “The Mission Never Sleeps,” for a self-documenting SIGINT system. The tool, says the FAQs memo, “provides the ability to dynamically describe GAO’s collection capabilities (through metadata record counts) with no human intervention and graphically display the information in a map view, bar chart, or simple table”. The memo even describes how “by extracting information from every DNI and DNR metadata record, the tool is able to create a near real-time snapshot of GAO’s collection capability at any given moment.”

It’s the maps, which provide snapshots of the Boundless Informant data that actually show how intensely India was targeted by the NSA. As per one “global heat map” seen by The Hindu, just in March 2013, the U.S. agency collected 6.3 billion pieces of information from the Internet network in India. Another NSA heat map shows that the American agency collected 6.2 billion pieces of information from the country’s telephone networks during the same period.

Three “global heat maps,” which give each country a colour code based on how extensively it was subjected to NSA surveillance, clearly show that India was one of the hottest targets for U.S. intelligence. With the colour scheme ranging from green (least subjected to surveillance) through yellow and orange to red (most surveillance), the heat maps show India in the shades of deep orange and red even as fellow BRICS nations like Brazil, Russia and China — all monitored extensively — sit in green or yellow zones.

In the first heat map, showing the aggregate of data tracked by Boundless Informant in March 2013, with 14 billion reports, Iran was the country where the largest amount of intelligence was gathered. It’s followed by 13.5 billion from Pakistan. Jordan came third with 12.7 billion, Egypt fourth with 7.6 billion, and India fifth with 6.3 billion.

In the heat map that gives the overview of internet surveillance (DNI), with 6.3 billion pieces of intelligence taken from its networks, India is placed between Iran and Pakistan (both red) and China and the U.S. (both light orange). Both Brazil and Russia are coded in light green in this map, while China is shown in light orange.

In the third heat map, depicting collection of telephone records (DNR), India is shown in deep orange, with 6.2 billion pieces of information plucked from its telephone networks. In the case of DNR collection, India is the only BRICS country to share the same colour as the other highly-monitored countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Venezuela; the other four emerging nations are in the green zone in this map.

Though India raised the issue of NSA surveillance when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited New Delhi on June 24 to take part in the India-U.S. Strategic Dialogue, New Delhi seemed to have bought the official American version of the story. “We had an issue, which was discussed when Secretary Kerry was in India,” Mr. Khurshid had said on July 2. “He [Mr. Kerry] made a very clear explanation that no content has been sought or received of any email… So, I think as far as we are concerned, there is no issue today,” the Indian minister had said.

It’s true that Boundless Informant doesn’t intercept content, but the top-secret documents obtained by The Hindu show that this internal NSA tool focusses on counting and categorising the telephone calls and Internet records as well as on storing and retrieving it, which could give intelligence-gathering agents the records of calls and message times, identities, addresses and other information needed to track people or pick content.

Because this metadata is machine-readable, and therefore searchable, it makes intensive surveillance possible as the record of a person’s email logs, phone records and clickstream — all the websites visited ever — are available to NSA agents, without a warrant or court order. Citizen’s rights groups see it as a serious violation of people’s privacy and personal data. “By accessing metadata, you can learn an awful lot about an individual. With mobile phones, location data has now been added to metadata. With the Internet, you can in addition understand someone’s location in a social network in much more detail, as well as understand how that network relates to other networks. If you put all of this together, you get quite a detailed map of someone’s movements, who they hang out and what drives their lives,” said Anja Kovacs, project director at Internet Democracy Project, a New Delhi-based group working for online freedom of speech.

In a recent example of how metadata can be misused by the government, a couple of Associated Press reporters were subpoenaed by the U.S. Justice Department in a case involving a national security issue. The journalists were sent notices after the department procured the details of their calls with their sources, sparking a conflict between the media and the White House over press freedom.

Hoax caller imitates Sonia Gandhi, government in a tizzy

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/new ... 905651.cms

India among top targets of spying by NSA

Sushupti wrote:What could this mean? Looks very scary.

Hoax caller imitates Sonia Gandhi, government in a tizzy

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/new ... 905651.cms

Pratyush wrote:Just goes to show who truly rules this country. What is the business of AG responding to Sonia. She is not a minister nor is a member of the cabinet. So why she ought to be responded to, as a common courtesy. If that's all, then this should not mean any thing. But the GOI goes in a tizzy.

A new and innovative method for smuggling gold from the Middle East into India involves the use of specially-designed vests worn under burqas by young women recruited as gold mules by smugglers, senior Indian airport security officials are claiming.With the Indian Government having recently raised the customs duty on gold from 10 per cent to 15 per cent, moving gold illegally into the country from the Gulf is now once again being seen as a lucrative option.This has led to a spate of arrests at airports involving women flying in from the Gulf trying to conceal gold bars on their persons.In the latest incident, the Air Customs Unit of Nedumbassery International Airport in the south Indian state of Kerala detained two young female passengers who flew in from the UAE with gold bars weighing 20kg, hidden in specially designed jackets worn under their burqas.“The ladies were hiding gold biscuits in the pockets of these special jackets that they were wearing. Initially, the customs officer thought the metal detector was beeping because of the small gold chain the passengers were wearing.“But on a detailed check, the gold was found,” a customs official was quoted as saying.This is not the first case at the Nedumbassery International Airport in Kochi Kerala.India’s Directorate General of Revenue Intelligence has therefore alerted all international airports to be vigilant.The smuggling operation now seems to mirror that of ‘drug mules’ used to move illegal substances from South America and Africa to the US, Europe and parts of Asia.Special agents recruit unemployed people and bring them into the Gulf on visit visas.Young ladies are especially targeted by gold smugglers as easy carriers and are offered foreign currency, air tickets, and the special jackets to hide the gold, burqas and the promise of a cut of the profits on reaching India.One such mule was quoted in the Indian press as saying a commission of Rs25,000 for each kg of gold smuggled to India was the offer.The mules can also be men, in which case gold is hidden in socks, shoes, undergarments and even children’s pampers.n agent will meet the mule outside the airport to pick –up the contraband and take back any extra money provided to clear customs.One lady was recently arrested from Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, with 1.5kg of gold in the metallic casing of her hand bag.Another man was caught with gold bars hidden in a cotton belt that he was wearing around his waist.In the last one week alone, Air Customs Authorities have caught 32kg of gold bars from passengers trying to smuggle the yellow metal through Kochi and Karippur International Airports in Kerala alone.ncreased gold smuggling cases are also being reported from other international airports in India, like the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi.

harbans wrote:Kids who fail and can't get admission before 18 can commit some really 'nice' crime, then expect an AC room, Kheer and chole bature, Cable TV, special attention, tutions delivered within the room and skills for coming into society the moment they leave the hotel..oh juvenile home. Nice career path Crime for kids..Kabit tried best to get the judgement for Afroze done before the juvenile act could get amended..he also in public tried to play down the severity of Afroze's role in the Dec 16th incident. The negligence of this UPA and the CJI in delaying the amendment to this criminal act is killing innocent people as of today..

At the Eid namaz at Red Road on August 9, Maulana Qari Fazlur Rehman berated the Chief Minister for the rise of Hindu consolidation in villages and demanded she put an end to it. Mamata Banerjee, who was present on the occasion for the second consecutive year, was unpleasantly surprised when the Maulana accused her Government of failing to meet its promises to the minorities.

The tradition of attending the Eid namaz despite not being a member of the community was begun by Mamata Banerjee, and was not practiced by the communists under the Left regimes.

....
According to informed sources, Maulana Rehman was angry that the Hindu Samhati, a relatively new organisation trying to defend the Hindu community when temples were attacked or women and girls molested or abducted, had established 1600 branches across the State. He explicitly asked the bemused Chief Minister to do ‘something’ about it.

He further demanded that she implement the recommendations of the Sachar Committee report, and called her a ‘liar’ for claiming to have fulfilled 90 per cent of the promises made to the community.

Maulana Rehman told the Chief Minister before the mammoth gathering that Trinamool Congress won the recent panchayat elections on the backs of Muslims and demanded reciprocal benefits on the form of housing, schools and colleges in poor and backward Muslim areas. The beleaguered Chief Minister immediately announced reservations for Muslims in higher education, from 2014, and promised further business avenues such as shops and small-scale enterprises. Trinamool MP Sultan Ahmed, also present at the Red Road prayers, tried to placate the Maulana by claiming that the State Government had recruited 11 per cent to 15 per cent Muslims in the police, home guards and civil defence wings.

Previously, in 2012, the Eid namaz at Red Road was led by Imam Mohd Nur ur Rahman Barkati of the Tipu Sultan Mosque. He told the Chief Minister that Muslims had dislodged the CPM regime and would not hesitate to do the same with the Trinamool Congress if their wishes were not satisfied.

The lists of Muslim demands includes: bring all Muslims under the OBC category (80 per cent are already included); reservations in employment and education (the latter has now been met); 25 per cent reservation in accommodation in new cities like Rajarhat; 5000 new flats for Muslims to be built by the Kolkata Corporation. The growing stridency of Muslim leaders is beginning to cause unease among the regime as some assess the cumulative impact of growing violence across the State.

It may be recalled that in February this year, sub-inspector Tapas Chowdhury was murdered during student violence in front of Hari Mohan Ghose College in Kolkata’s Garden Reach area. Trinamool Congress member Sheikh Subhan, who was caught on camera firing at the policeman, was arrested in the case, following which the State Government transferred Police Commissioner RK Pachnanda, a move criticised by Governor MK Narayanan and opposition parties. Trinamool Congress councillor Mohammad Iqbal alias Munna, who was with Subhan (his aide) during the shooting, was also arrested in connection with the murder. He has recently been released on bail.

The same month, there was a serious outbreak of communal violence in South 24 Parganas district after Rohul Kuddus, a local maulvi, was shot dead late at night while returning from a function; his aide, Abdul Wahab, was injured. Within hours of the murder, truckloads of persons from various parts of Kolkata descended on the area and torched and looted over 200 Hindu homes in the villages of Naliakhali, Herobhanga, Gopalpur and Goladogra, in Canning and Joynagar police station areas.

The violence was clearly organised and soon spread to parts of North 24 Parganas. Police officers Anup Samaddar and Anup Ghosh of Canning police station were seriously injured and two police vehicles torched in the melee.

Observers had then surmised that the violence was a run-up to the Panchayat elections in Bengal, as the maulvi was reportedly carrying over Rs 11 lakhs on his person when murdered; the money was never recovered. This view was validated by Maulana Rehman when he stated in his namaz speech at Red Road that 70 per cent of the persons who died in poll-related violence during the Panchayat elections were Muslims. The Maulana demanded that the community should get commensurate benefits.

Residents in the remote villages and districts of the State profess growing anxiety on account of increasing incidents of iconoclasm all across the region. Sunil of Asansol told this writer that incidents of attack or encroachments on temple land occur almost daily.

ramana wrote:Deccan Chronicle got the importance of the juvenile act on criminalizing the youth of all shades. Insted of giving them jobs what the act has doen is to minimize their costs for crime:

harbans wrote:Kabit tried best to get the judgement for Afroze done before the juvenile act could get amended..he also in public tried to play down the severity of Afroze's role in the Dec 16th incident.

if our people ever hear Kenyatta's words that "he will chase the culprits to the end of the world and give them the most fitting punishment"

Suspended IPS officer GL Singhal seems to have succeeded where his former boss and suspended IPS officer DG Vanzara failed. While accused policemen in Ishrat case have managed to get bail, those indicted in the Sohrab case are still in jail.

Singhal, who resigned from police service, was the first IPS officer to be arrested in the Ishrat case followed by the four other officers. But all five were granted bail.

It is said that Singhal had struck a deal with CBI and managed to get bail for himself as well as his subordinates, including inspectors Bharat Patel and DH Goswami, who have admitted to their crime. Through them, the CBI got clinching proof to nail senior IPS officers PP Pandey, Vanzara, former Intelligence Bureau joint director Rajinder Kumar and even former junior home minister Amit Shah.

A section of the police hailed Singhal for bailing out his subordinates and blamed Vanzara for the long jail terms of his nearly two dozen subordinates.

Sources said till Singhal was arrested, CBI had no evidence or clue to the execution of Ishrat and three others. However, it was Singhal, who first dared to strike a deal with CBI for safe passage for himself and his team.

harbans wrote:

if our people ever hear Kenyatta's words that "he will chase the culprits to the end of the world and give them the most fitting punishment"

If NM says or does anything towards it, they will say he is not inclusive. Slowly the Psec mindset is turning Dhimmi. So too many Hindu 'right' wingers clamoring for Hate Speech controls. The setups have started to hide Truth so that 'harmony' is maintained. That clearly implies that 'Harmony' is holding back Truth under some threat perception. Thus GoI has negated the Slogan of Satyameva Jayate by putting Harmony above the Truth. We need to get Truth up as priority. We need to know and need to say it. Even if some people hate it initially. The Truth not only creates hate in some instances it also importantly shames many who have humanity in them. In other words it breaks the Doctrinal resistance of the Enemy. We must try and fight very hard on this front. Please educate others who are clamoring for Hate Speech controls to resist strongly and tell them why it is so dangerous. Remember all these IBN7, Sagarika, Digvijay, COngi types types are clamoring for SM and Hate speech controls..that fight will have to be stronger than it is now. Please do educate and keep posting against it. This is THE MOST important element in the fight against Islamism folks.

Accused in Ajmer blast: UPA leaders asked me to implicate RSS chief

One of the men accused in the 2007 Ajmer Dargah bomb blast case has alleged that several union ministers and senior Congress leaders, besides National Investigation Agency officers, had pressured him to implicate RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and senior RSS functionary Indresh Kumar in the attack.

In his application to the CBI court, Bhavesh Patel, who was arrested in March, has alleged that Acharya Pramod Krishnan of Moradabad had facilitated his meetings with Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, his deputy R P N Singh and Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal, all of who wanted him to implicate the RSS leaders.

Patel’s counsel Bhupendra Singh Chouhan said Patel would make the same statement in court Thursday. According to the NIA chargesheet, Patel is alleged to have provided logistical support to a saffron terror module for the attack and carried the bomb inside the Dargah.

Digvijaya Singh and R P N Singh rubbished the allegations and said they had never met or even heard of Patel. Shinde and Jaiswal could not be reached for comment.

Patel has said he was introduced to Digvijaya Singh by Krishnan in his ashram in November 2012. “I told him about my case. ‘Digvijaya Singhji ne kaha tum nishchint raho. Samay aane par jaisa hum kahen, waisa karna’ (Digvijaya Singh told me not to worry and in time, do as he says).”

Patel alleged Krishnan later arranged meetings with R P N Singh and Jaiswal, who told him Digvijaya Singh had apprised them about his case and that he would be absolved if he did their bidding.

The Ajmer blast accused also claimed Krishnan took him to “some place” in Delhi where Shinde was present.

“Sushil Kumar Shinde told me ‘when you are brought to the court, you have to name Mohan Bhagwat and Indresh Kumar and you have to say that you engineered the blast in Ajmer Dargah as per their directions’,” Patel alleged.

He, however, claimed he did not eventually name Indresh or Bhagwat “as my conscience did not allow me.”

Krishnan denied Patel’s allegations. “It is an utter lie. I never introduced him to anybody or took him anywhere. Some lawyers from Delhi informed me about his arrest in the Ajmer blast case. Until then, I was not aware about his involvement. His brother had approached me for help after his arrest but I had refused,” he said.

NIA (ADG) N R Wasan also denied Patel’s allegations, and said he is an accused who has been in custody.

NIA sources questioned the timing of Patel’s petition and said Hindu extremists accused in terror cases had made similar allegations against NIA officials.

Coimbatore: Unidentified persons Thursday hurled a 'petrol bomb' at the house of a BJP functionary here but there was no damage or casualties, police said.

The functionary, Ramanathan was getting ready to go to Tiruchirapalli, where Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address a rally, when the petrol bomb fell in the portico and exploded, police said.

Security guards, provided by city police, asked Ramanathan not to venture out and have launched a hunt for the culprits.

Harbans ji, There are hate speech controls already in place. There is no "Freedom of Speech" in India as far as I know. This is one of the prime reasons why Indics are unable to fight or even understand Islam. Just try writing a critique on Quran or analysing Muhammad's biography and then see the drama. The current establishment, the laws and the law enforcement agencies all are heavily loaded against Hindus. Whenever Freedom of Speech is granted to Hindus, half the battle(against Islam) would have been won.

India could soon see Visa on Arrival (VoA) facility opening up for nationals of all countries, overriding grave security concerns, with the blessings of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi.

The ministry of tourism has been pushing for liberalisation of the visa regime since June but the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which handles immigration at the airports, is completely against the move on grounds of national security.

However, with tourism ministry managing to convince Rahul Gandhi, it appears to be a losing battle for the IB. Sources claims that tourism Secretary Parvez Dewan briefed his minister K. Chiranjeevi and made a case in favour of easy visas, saying it will encourage tourists and bring in the much-needed foreign exchange into the country. Chiranjeevi and Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde met Rahul Gandhi last week to discuss the issue. Shinde failed to put across IB's objections forcefully and meekly gave in to facts and figures given by the tourism ministry.

SwamyG wrote:Fishy, no? It claimed 17 dead and 100 injured. What kind of mistake would that be?

morem wrote:

SwamyG wrote:Fishy, no? It claimed 17 dead and 100 injured. What kind of mistake would that be?

yes , and the ticker attributed it to headlines today
wonder who controls what goes in there
AND it was gone in 2-3 minutes