Beware! Spy agents can monitor all your email, phone calls

Here's a scene from a Hollywood film: A man hiding in the Cambodian jungles dials a number on his mobile phone and as soon as he speaks, the hi-tech gadgets at the CIA headquarters in the United States recognise the voice, flag it as a wanted suspect and the agents order a missile attack on the man.

Work of fiction? Stretching the possibility of technology a bit too far? Not exactly.

In a devastating release of secret documents by the whistle-blowing web site WikiLeaks on Thursday, there is now not only proof that such technology exists, but also that companies around the world are busy selling such products to all kinds of players.

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The documents have been collected from over 130 companies based in 25 countries, from Brazil to Switzerland.

Until recently, spy agencies, like the CBI, could bug phones of individuals, but now technology exists for indiscriminate and mass surveillance.

Companies such as VASTech secretly sell equipment to permanently record the phone calls of entire nations.

Others record the location of every mobile phone in a city, down to 50 metres. Systems to infect every Facebook user or smartphone owner of an entire population group are on the intelligence market.

In India, three companies are selling technologies that not only listen in to phone conversations, but can also monitor every email, text message and each and every activity a person does on the computer, according to the released documents.

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Shogi Communications sells equipment that can track Internet activity, mobile phones, speech analysis and text messages.

ClearTrail has technology that can monitor Internet activities of an individual, while Shield Security can keep an eye on GPS.

These companies claim that they sell their technologies only to national spy agencies.

Such claims raise three questions. First is the obvious privacy issue.

Why should a government body or anybody else be allowed to monitor an individual's private emails or phone conversation without a specific court order?

Second, what is the guarantee that the government or spy agents will not misuse such information?

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Let's say the government doesn't like a certain businessman, an activist or a journalist.

So, in an effort to silence them or force them to back off on certain things, it can very easily misuse the information that has been secretly, and illegally, obtained.

Third, what is the guarantee that such technologies will not be used by enemy countries or anti-national groups?

Who is to stop these companies from selling their products to such groups and countries?

Imagine a terrorist group or an enemy country monitoring all the communication, including the sensitive one, of India.

This is a real threat especially as this industry is, in practice, unregulated.

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According to the secret papers, intelligence agencies, military forces and police authorities are able to silently and secretly intercept calls and take over computers without the help or knowledge of the telecommunication providers.

Users' physical location can be tracked if they are carrying a mobile phone, even if it is only on stand by.

Surveillance companies like SS8 in the United States, Hacking Team in Italy and Vupen in France manufacture viruses (Trojans) that hijack individual computers and phones (including iPhones, Blackberries and Androids), take over the device, record its every use, movement, and even the sights and sounds of the room it is in.

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Other companies like Phoenexia in the Czech Republic collaborate with the military to create speech analysis tools.

They identify individuals by gender, age and stress levels and track them based on 'voiceprints'.

Blue Coat in the US and Ipoque in Germany sell tools to governments in countries like China and Iran to prevent dissidents from organising online.

CIA officials have bought software that allows them to match phone signals and voice prints instantly and pinpoint the specific identity and location of individuals.

Intelligence Integration Systems, based in Massachusetts, sells a 'location-based analytics' software called Geospatial Toolkit for this purpose.

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Another Massachusetts company named Netezza, which bought a copy of the software, allegedly reverse-engineered the code and sold a hacked version to the CIA for use in remotely piloted drone aircraft.

"Why sample, when you can monitor all network traffic inexpensively?" says a brochure from Endace, a company based in New Zealand.

China Top Communications, based in Beijing, claims to be able to crack passwords of more than 30 email service providers, including Gmail, 'in real time by a PASSIVE WAY [sic]'.

In the deliberately obscure language of the surveillance industry, 'passive' interception is that which takes place without the target knowing they are being watched.

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In January 2011, the National Security Agency of the United States broke ground on a $1.5-billion facility in the Utah desert that is designed to store terabytes of domestic and foreign intelligence data forever and process it for years to come.

The WikiLeaks documents show that not only an individual's privacy is at risk but also the security of the nation.

The government must either ban the selling of such technologies or strictly regulate the industry, which is already worth more than $5 billion, so that there is no scope of abuse either by rogue secret agents or enemy groups.