IE 11 Not Supported

For optimal browsing, we recommend Chrome, Firefox or Safari browsers.

Tech-Savvy Terrorists Force India to Adopt Hi-Technology

Following terror strikes that hit India over the weekend, the government has finally realized it has few options but to bank on technology to curb sharp escalation of terrorism within its borders.

Bangalore Police using hi-tech sensors to search for unexploded bombs. Photo Courtesy:hubpages.com


As the Indian government struggles to pinpoint the culprits behind two back-to-back terror strikes that hit India over the weekend, it appears that the government has finally realized it has few options but to bank on technology to curb sharp escalation of terrorism within its borders.

Last weekend was perhaps the most macabre weekend in a long time for India. The country was rocked by 24 bomb blasts within a span of just twenty four hours. The quick succession of terror attacks was. unprecedented in India. Bangalore, the global IT hub was the first city to be hit on Friday when chain blasts of 8 bombs went off over four hours in congested market places, killing two and injuring eight. Just 24 hours later, while Bangalore was still recovering from the shock, 16 similarly orchestrated blasts, deadlier and more brutal, rocked the northwestern city of Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat, killing another 48 and injuring more than 100. Even now, unexploded bombs are still being discoverer from another major town in Gujarat, while all major cities like Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata are getting inundated with bomb threats to mock the nation's vulnerability to terrorism.

Like the dozen -odd similar terror attacks since 2004 that took over 3800 lives, the authorities this time round too had no clues that the attacks were coming, or who did it, and why. The reasons for this failure are many: lack of intelligence, lack of adequate security cover, and lack of alacrity are some of the significant ones. But an equally significant reason is the inability of all authorities, local and federal, to apply and use technology for monitoring and nabbing terrorists. In fact, the terrorists usually have manage to remain a step ahead with innovative use of technology.

"Terror groups are outsmarting the intelligence set-up in both tactics and technology," says Shashi Kant, additional director general of Punjab Police.

For instance, after each of the four blasts in the last year, the terrorist have sent emails to the media claiming responsibility for the blasts. And although the servers from which these emails originate were tracked, authorities failed to nab the culprits. Terrorists were tech-savvy enough to either hacked into those servers or cloned the IP addresses to erase their trails.

Similarly, the terrorists use cell phones freely to communicate between themselves but such calls are rarely traced since the terrorists use a combination of foreign SIM cards and computer hacking to trespass into Indian communication networks making detection of the origin of the calls almost impossible. Besides encrypted emails and SMS services, the encryption keys of which are not available to the government, are also used extensively.

The weekend blasts too used high-technology. For the first time, instead of using timers, the terrorist used ICs to trigger the blasts at equal intervals and to even leave some of the bombs unexploded to convey the message that they can "strike anywhere and at will."

One reason why the government has been slow to harness technology for anti-terrorism efforts is lack of expertise and manpower. "Effective intelligence gathering network is lacking in the country," says an advisor to National Technical Research Organization (NTRO), an undercover agency under one of the country's intelligence outfit Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), requesting anonymity. "India not only lacks adequate technology infrastructure but lacks manpower and most importantly funding."

Nevertheless, it seems that the government has woken up to the urgent need to get more focusing on the use of technology. "The latest terror attacks have forced the government to go high on hi-tech," said the source from NTRO. This is evident from the slew of high-technology security measures that various authorities in India have adopted in the past few days.

Among these, one notable one is Delhi University's decision to get its whole campus wired by closed circuit televisions (CCTVs), to not only to monitor student activities but also to "ensure foolproof security in the campus."

In one of the emails sent to the media after the weekend attacks, the terrorists have warned that next on the target list of their "jihad" are educational institutions, places of worship and religious institutions, and other government and commercial organizations.

According to the University, the first batch of CCTVS has already been installed, while the whole campus would be wired in the next seven days. When done, the Delhi University will be the first university in the country to be covered fully by a round-the -clock electronic surveillance.

But if Delhi University is worried, authorities in the Salt Lake City (near Kolkata) in the eastern part of Indi a have become paranoid. Salt Lake is considered to be the "IT hub of the East (India)", and houses many major global IT companies like IBM, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Siemens, Accenture, Cognizant and the likes. The local government has decided wire up the whole city too with CCTV, GPRS devices and warning alarm systems to address the security concerns of not only the 50,000-odd techies that work in the area everyday but also that an equal number of officials who work in government offices in the locality.

Significantly, the Bangalore government also announced on July 28 -- two days after the city was hit -- that it is planning to issue smart cards to all its residents, particularly "those in the vulnerable sections," to keep a tab on their movements.

Drawing attention to this sudden flurry of technological security beef up is not to suggest that India's security agencies do not use technology at all. "Technology has always been one of the tools for intelligence gathering, even if those are inadequate," says the NTRO source. "And over the past two years technology has increasingly been an important tool for us."

For instance, over the past two years the Border Security Force has been equipped with sophisticated surveillance and tracking gadgets like thermal imagers and underground sensors along the porous Indo-Bangladesh border to prevent infiltration by Pakistan-backed terrorists. These apart, with the help of Israeli government the BSF has also installed long-range electronic observation systems, and radars to track movements of vehicles or humans within a 25-mile radius.

In Jammu and Kashmir as well -- touted as the most risky region of the world in terms of terror attacks -- the intelligence agencies collect technical intelligence through all sorts of hi-tech gadgets including satellites, computers, aircraft and radio intercepts.

However, what is missing here is follow up. While technology may indeed be used to some extent for gathering intelligence, the analysis of the collected data is still a grey area. What is lacking is the effective capability to convert such data to information," say sources.

But that gap too may be filled soon. Reportedly, following the latest attacks, India is also negotiating with global suppliers to acquire more cutting edge-technology including data mining software for processing information in a bid to be better informed prior to any future attack.

But the moot question is, even as these attacks have served as a wake-up call for India, with Muslims as the largest minority population in the world, can greater use of hi-tech really contain the rapidly mutating terror modules across the country?


Indrajit Basu is the international correspondent for Government Technology's Digital Communities.