Why in news?
The new project of National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) intends to link social media accounts to an extensive database of entry and exit records, banking and telephone details, among others.
What does NATGRID look like?
- The project, initially started in 2009, post Mumbai terror attacks, with a budget of ₹2,800 crore, is an online database for collating scattered pieces of information and putting them on one platform.
- At least 10 central agencies like Intelligence Bureau (IB), Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and others will have access to the data on a secured platform.
- The project gathered pace in 2016.
- The 10 user agencies will be linked independently with certain databases that would be procured from 21 providing organisations and include telecom, tax records, bank, immigration, etc. to enable the generation of intelligence inputs.
- The proposal has received resistance from the intelligence agencies, as linking the social media accounts to sensitive government data could expose the system to “trojan attacks.”
- Intelligence agencies had also earlier opposed the NATGRID itself amid fears that it would impinge on their territory and possibly result in leaks on the leads they were working on to other agencies.
- NATGRID’s data recovery centre has been constructed in Bengaluru.
