Internet Traffic Surveillance & Network Monitoring in India: Case Study of NETRA

Abstract

Internet traffic surveillance is gaining importance in today's digital world. Lots of international agencies are putting in efforts to monitor the network around their countries to see suspicious activities and illegal or illegitimate transmission of messages. India, being a center of attraction for terrorist activities, is also working towards development of such surveillance systems. NETRA or Network Traffic Analysis is one such effort being taken by the Indian Government to filter suspicious keywords from messages in the network. But is it good enough to be used at highest level for security analysis or does the system design needs to be improved as compared to other similar systems around the world; this question is answered through this study. The comparison of NETRA is done against Dish Fire, Prism and Echelon. The design of the NETRA scheme and implementation level analysis of the system shows few weaknesses like limited memory options, limited channels for monitoring, pre-set filters, ignoring big data demands, security concerns, social values breach and ignoring ethical issues. These can be covered through alternate options which can improve the existing system. Inclusion of self-similarity models, Self-Configuring Network Monitoring and smart monitoring through early intrusion detections can be embedded in the architecture of existing surveillance system to give it more depth and make it more robust.

A Survey of Defensive Measures for Digital Persecution in the Global South

“…Network Traffic Analysis (NETRA) is the Indian internet surveillance system. A 2016 case study of this system explains that it is used to target people and groups "that have a history or an inclination to carry out heinous and opprobrious acts" [23]. It filters internet traffic looking for words, such as "attack", "kill", "bomb", etc.…”

Intelligent IoT Traffic Classification Using Novel Search Strategy for Fast-Based-Correlation Feature Selection in Industrial Environments

“…Traffic classification and filtering has been deeply appliplyed in severals works and fields. A case study is realized by R. Gupta et al in [20], where the internet traffic survellance and network monitoring in India is studied. Under the context of preventing terrorist attacks, India is working towards development of surveillance systems.…”

“…One of this kind of systems is NETRA, used by the Indian Government to search suspicious keywords from messages in the net-work. In [20], NETRA is compared against some other similar systems like Dish Fire, Prism or Echelon. Their work shows how NETRA works and how it filters the messages and traffic.…”