Technologies like these have helped trace the alleged terrorists arrested by the Delhi Police on the charges of having executed a series of bombings in 2010 and in several cases, terrorist attacks have also been pre-empted in this way. But, as is the case with any form of technology, these technologies have their drawbacks too. In India, unlike in other democracies using these technologies, there is no intelligence regulatory system to safeguard citizens’ rights and privacies. The very technology that had helped our government catch a handful of terrorists, can also monitor us - our emails, our phone calls, internet pages we visit, text messages we send, online purchases we make, bank transactions we engage in and the like, all of which potentially end up in their records.

The Hindu’s investigation has showed that these fears are real. In several states, police forces and intelligence services, using systems that can scan through mobile phones and email traffic, search for threats being picked up in private communications. Andhra Pradesh shut down its passive interception capabilities after it accidentally intercepted sensitive conversations between high officials. Karnataka officials had also accidentally intercepted conversations involving a romantic relationship between a leading politician and a movie star, while Mumbai has had several scandals involving unauthorized listening-in to phones owned by corporate figures and movie stars. In one case, a senior politician was even subjected to a blackmail bid. In another notorious case, Amar Singh's phone conversations were recorded with the consent of his service provider on the basis of what turned out to be a faked government e-mail but no one has yet been held accountable for the outrageously unlawful intrusion into his privacy.