Honge kaamyaab, honge kaamyaab, ham honge kaamyaab ek din
Ho ho mann mai hai vishwaas, pura hai vishwaas
Hum honge kaamyaab ek din.........
Now the big take away for me from the article down below was ‘All of this happens with the support of Intelligence Community partners and the technical wizards in TAO.’ Who are these Intelligence community partners ? Are these private sector companies of the parent nation ?
Does purchase of equipment from such companies jeopardise our national security ? Have we instituted course corrections ? Who will initiate such measures in India ? When will these happen ? Can such measures happen in secrecy ? Can govt purchase procedures be secret ?
These are questions that should not take an inordinately long time for a logical answer, but in ‘Incredible India’ all these are lost in a maze of mirrors. Inspite of the Government announcing schemes like ‘Make in India’ the solutions seem to escape our National Security experts.
In fact it takes me back to school where we used to sing ‘ Hum honge kamyab ek din..’
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/
Photos of an NSA “upgrade” factory show Cisco router getting implant
Servers, routers get “beacons” implanted at secret locations by NSA’s TAO team.
SEAN GALLAGHER – 5/15/2014, 1:00 AM
NSA techs perform an unauthorized field upgrade to Cisco hardware in these 2010 photos from an NSA document.
A document included in the trove of National Security Agency files released with Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide details how the agency’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit and other NSA employees intercept servers, routers, and other network gear being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert implant firmware onto them before they’re delivered.
These Trojan horse systems were described by an NSA manager as being “some of the most productive operations in TAO because they pre-position access points into hard target networks around the world.”
The document, a June 2010 internal newsletter article by the chief of the NSA’s Access and Target Development department (S3261) includes photos (above) of NSA employees opening the shipping box for a Cisco router and installing beacon firmware with a “load station” designed specifically for the task.
The NSA manager described the process:
Here’s how it works: shipments of computer network devices (servers, routers, etc,) being delivered to our targets throughout the world are intercepted. Next, they are redirected to a secret location where Tailored Access Operations/Access Operations (AO-S326) employees, with the support of the Remote Operations Center (S321), enable the installation of beacon implants directly into our targets’ electronic devices. These devices are then re-packaged and placed back into transit to the original destination. All of this happens with the support of Intelligence Community partners and the technical wizards in TAO.
Wasn’t it Marx who said, “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy and then as a farce. ” After ejection of Brits, India succumbed to dollar colonisation and now to information colonisation ? Like predecessors, even the Modi government clearly have a weak sense of history.
I liked the article for presenting the facts of the matter and allowing the reader to make their own opinions or make them think without trying to push the writer’s opinion down the reader’s throat
In light of the Scorpene leak this article takes on so much significance