NEW DELHI: The National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States had purportedly kick-started plans to install a super spy software named APPARITION in New Delhi, a recent ‘top secret’-marked NSA document leaked by CIA contractor-turned whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed.
Under a sub-heading “Future Plans”, the December 11, 2008 document says: “Plans are well advanced to install APPARITIONs at SCS sites in New Delhi, Ankara, Kuwait, and Istanbul before the end of this year.”
SCS stands for Special Collection Service (SCS), a very secretive collaborative programme by US’ CIA and the NSA aimed at inserting eavesdropping equipment in difficult and inaccessible areas such as in foreign embassies, foreign government installations, etc.
Reports speak of an SCS surveillance unit being set up in the embassy campus of another foreign country in New Delhi that operated under the codename DAISY. SCS also set up a unit about a mile from Osama Bin Laden’s alleged compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
A New Delhi collection site would have enabled much easier access to China, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other sensitive locations in the Middle East.
The APPARITION programme pinpoints the locations of people accessing the Internet across sensitive locations. Subsequent actionable intelligence information may lead to sending lethal Reaper drones to eliminate the target.
Interestingly, the NSA document is addressed to US government entities besides state agencies in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and New Zealand—member countries of the ‘Five Eyes’ programme.
