Intelligence Bureau (India)
The Intelligence Bureau is India's internal intelligence agency and reputedly the world's oldest intelligence agency.[1]It was recast as the Central Intelligence Bureau in 1947 under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The reason for the perception may be due to the fact that, in 1885, Major General Sir Charles MacGregor was appointed Quartermaster General and head of the Intelligence Department for the British Indian Army at Simla.
The objective then was to monitor Russian troop deployments in Afghanistan, fearing a Russian invasion of British India through the North-West during the late 19th century.
In 1909, the Indian Political Intelligence Office was established in England in response to the development of Indian anarchist activities, which came to be called the Indian Political Intelligence (IPI) from 1921.
This was a state-run surveillance and monitoring agency.
The IPI was run jointly by the India Office and the Government of India and reported jointly to the Secretary of the Public and Judicial Department of the India Office, and the Director of Intelligence Bureau (DIB) in India, and maintained close contact with Scotland Yard and MI5.
The Intelligence Bureau activities are highly confidential and no publications other than the internal ones do reveal their arcane workings. Their largely speculative task includes clearance of license to amateur radio professionals. The Intelligence Bureau also passes on intelligence information between other Indian Intelligence agencies and the police. The Intelligence Bureau grants the basic security clearances to Indian diplomats and judges before they take the national oath. On exceptional occasions, Intelligence Bureau officers interact with the media during acute national crisis. Other than inter checking around 6,000 suspicious letters daily, Intelligence Bureau also has email spying software similar to FBI`s carnivore system.
The Intelligence Bureau is also authorized to carry out wiretapping without a warrant. Moreover, the Intelligence Bureau also has numerous authors who are responsible to write letters to various newspapers and magazines and thus supports the government`s viewpoint. The collection mechanisms of the Intelligence Bureau change depending on the region, but the Intelligence Bureau executes its functions both at the state level and the national level. Employees of the Intelligence Bureau carry out the bulk of the intelligence collection strictly internally and only the higher officers execute coordination and higher-level management of the bureau generally. Intelligence Bureau has so far been divided into three categories - namely general, technical and ministerial. This division has different tasks to perform. However, officers from general cadres always get favoured treatment. This is because general cadre with the technical support does most of the intelligence information gathering. The technical cadre and the ministerial cadre provide this information.
Responsibilities
Shrouded in secrecy, the IB is used to garner intelligence from within India and also execute counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism tasks.The Intelligence Bureau comprises employees from law enforcement agencies, mostly from the Indian Police Service and the military.
However, the Director of Intelligence Bureau (DIB) has always been an IPS officer.
In addition to domestic intelligence responsibilities, the IB is particularly tasked with intelligence collection in border areas, following the 1951 recommendations of the Himmatsinhji Committee (also known as the North and North-East Border Committee), a task entrusted to military intelligence organizations prior to independence in 1947.
All spheres of human activity within India and in the neighborhood are allocated to the charter of duties of the Intelligence Bureau. The IB was also tasked with other external intelligence responsibilities as of 1951 till 1968, when the Research and Analysis Wing was formed.
The current chief of the organization is Rajiv Mathur.
Activities
Understanding of the arcane workings of the IB is largely speculative. One known task of the IB is to clear licenses to amateur radio enthusiasts.The IB also passes on intelligence between other Indian Intelligence agencies and the Police.
The IB also grants the necessary security clearances to Indian diplomats and judges before they take the oath.
On rare occasions, IB officers interact with the media during a criss situation.
The IB is also rumored to intercept and open around 6,000 letters daily.
It also has an email spying system similar to FBI's Carnivore System.[5]
The Intelligence Bureau is also authorized to conduct wiretapping without a warrant.
The IB also has numerous authors who write letters to various newspapers and magazines to support the government's perspective. According to recent reports,
Workings
The `Class I' (gazette) officers carry out coordination and higher-level management the IB. These officers are (again in increasing order of seniority) Asst. Director, the Joint Deputy Director, Joint Director, the Deputy Director, Additional Director, Special Director or Special Secretary and finally the Director.The SIB's are headed by officers of the rank of Joint Director or above but smaller SIB's are also sometimes headed by Deputy Directors. The SIB's have their units at district head quarters headed by Deputy Central Intelligence Officers or DCIO's.
The IB maintains a large number of field units and headquarters (which are under the control of Joint or Deputy Directors). It is through these offices and the intricate process of deputation that a very `organic' linkage between the state police agencies and the IB is maintained.
In addition to these, at the national level the IB has several units (in some cases Subsidiary Intelligence Bureaus) to keep track of issues like terrorism, counter-intelligence, VIP security, threat assessment and sensitive areas (i.e. Jammu and Kashmir and such).
Some of the problems within the IB are briefly listed below:
1) There are problems regarding recruiting: in the past postings and deputations with the IB were regarded as positive career choices among police officers, and this led to a favorable buildup of expertise in the both state and national law enforcement circles. In more recent times, this has changed, state police forces offer far swifter means of promotion and career advancement, also the perks of state level police postings in some cases compare more favorably than those of a central posting. The result is that people have to be forcibly deputed to the IB. This is further compounded by the fact that IB postings often involve extremely hazardous duties in hostile populations. Thus some postings go unfilled and in some cases the IB gets very thinly stretched on the ground. This leads to gaps in intelligence collection.2) In sensitive areas (ex. J&K. NER) the pace of security operations is very high. This means that the turnaround time between collection, collation and dissemination has to be very small. IB officers serve largely in advisory capacity and have to coordinate with the regular enforcement arms. To reduce the dead time in intelligence handling, today in most sensitive areas, the law enforcement arms (in most cases) are endowed with their own intelligence units. These units do varying amounts of intelligence targeting and are in theory supposed to coordinate with the IB, sometimes however, this coordination is not achieved and quite possibly another intelligence agency dominates leading to the loss of the `overall picture'.
3) The IB is Government of India's principal internal news agency. It is responsible for monitoring all aspects of governance. As an extension of this role, it routinely monitors the state governments and often draws up independent assessments of the security situation in a state and advises the Governor. At the central level the IB closely monitors developments relating to parliamentary affairs and reports back to the Cabinet Secretariat. The Special Enquiry and Surveillance unit (SES) of the IB handles most of this work. This task is vital in maintaining the stability of elected governments. However it can easily be subverted to achieve less savory aims, especially at the state level. Apart from any actual degradation in capacity, this kind of work breeds the impression in that the IB is purely a mechanism for targeting the opposition.
4) The IB is also tasked with Counter-Intelligence operations. This area of IB work has been the object of severe criticism and almost every internal disturbance is projected as a failure in counter-intelligence (there is always talk of the absence of specificity in threat assessments). Problems related to this part are discussed more extensively in the section on counter-intelligence issues. The task forces have in all probability made several recommendations about these topics. The task force on Internal Security has stated the need to place emphasis on the position of the Secretary (MHA) and that all intelligence regarding internal security developments should be passed to him; this is appears to be an attempt to foster the functioning of the `Core Intelligence Processing Unit' in the MHA. The task force on Internal Security has also made clear the need to create dedicated `systems and procedures' of intelligence dissemination to aid in the conduct of counter-terrorist and counter-insurgency operations. It is also likely that the capabilities in the IB relating to counter-intelligence are being upgraded (this is discussed in greater detail in the section on Counter-Intelligence). The task force on internal security has also called for an end to political interference in the IB, it has suggested that a internal review and oversight body be set up in the IB to stamp out this sort of thing, but it is unclear to the author as to exactly how this mechanism will function.