Banks to hire Private Security firms

The outsourcing fever seems to be catching on with several nationalised banks going whole hog to privatise their security infrastructure. This comes close on the heels of the Reserve Bank of India allowing noncurrency chest branches of PSU banks to outsource their security needs to private players from March next year.

-Hindustan Times, September 27, 2002

New software to check offenders at airports

Habitual offenders and misbehaving passengers at airports will no longer have a cakewalk.The Customs Department has developed a software called data of offences, smuggling, seizures, investigations, evasion and rewards (Dossier) which will manage and analyse records of all past offenders.

-Times of India October 11, 2002

"Sharing of Intelligence & Data": a problem

We in India have been constantly lamenting that there is no co ordination among various Intelligenceand Criminal Investigating agencies. Whenever there is a situation like Kargil war or attack on Parliament building, there is an outcry from every media and public opinion creators that there is lack of coordination or information sharing.A month or two later, everything dies down and we are on square one stage of information still not being shared.However we have consolation that even a mighty country like USA suffers from this malady.A 173 page report prepared by the leading IT experts and national security experts released in USA on Oct 8, says that unless information provided by state and local officials is shared with Washington "we may wind up getting all of the disadvantages of invasion of privacy with none the national security gains." It was in this context that Philip Zelikow, a former White House Official and an executive director of a task force, said recently "Our study shows that the information and technology that would have prevented the 9/11 attacks already existed." He added "Had such system been in place, Sept 11 might have been the nation's most important intelligence coup,instead of a day of national tragedy".

At this stage, I am reminded of a small incident of intelligence sharing between IB and G Branch of BSF in Gujarat way back in 1981.An official of G Branch BSF came to my house one day and said that they had received some Pak wireless message stating that informant had reached safely. The official wanted to know whether any petty smuggler or transborder carrier had crossed illegally to Pak from Kutch border in the last few days.All of us started an exercise to find out the illegal crossings in the last few days and the result was the famous INS Valsura case in which two civilian employees of Navy were arrested and finally convicted. The point to be highlighted here was that the official of BSF inspite of being senior in rank to me had came to my house and shared the information with me instead of sending it directly to the Hqrs where it could have been delayed in red tapism.

-Suresh Mandan California, USA