NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Friday issued a fresh notice asking the Centre to respond on its notification to allow central agencies to snoop on computer resource.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had issued an order in December 2018 granting ten central intelligence and security agencies access to information stored, received or transmitted in computers.
The notice says the agencies can intercept, monitor and decrypt “any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer.”
These ten agencies are:
- Intelligence Bureau
- Narcotics Control Bureau
- Enforcement Directorate
- Central Board of Direct Taxes
- Directorate of Revenue Intelligence
- Central Bureau of Investigation
- National Investigation Agency
- Cabinet Secretariat(RAW)
- Directorate of Signal Intelligence(For service areas of Jammu & Kashmir, North-East and Assam only)
- Commissioner of Police, Delhi
The order, issued under Section 69(1) of the Information Technology Act, was signed by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba.
A plea, challenging the constitutionality and legality of the order empowering the central agencies to monitor on all computers, was later filed before the Supreme Court.
