Are Indian armymen blabbing secrets on Orkut?

Indian military personnel are revealing startling military information on one of the most popular online social networking sites. The defence ministry is waiting for a report from the Indian Army before it takes action. How serious is the breach?

By Kajal Basu

" NDA...IMA...17Madras...EME...accdnt...left d army...ISB (20 days)...Now, IIM'A Class of 2009 - asks “All officers who have joined d community recently are requested to update all and sundry about life, location n wht else is happenin..how r the courses goin on et al...”
Captain Rajat Mishra,
in the Corps of EME, Indian Army community

“C4 I is the buzz word in the army and is considered vital for any sucessful operation/mission.It was earlier C3I (Command, Control, Comunication & Intelligence) With the advent of computers C4I has become the buzz word…How do the actual system work? Officers are requested to reply…”
Ranjit Misal Nikam,
in the Indian Army Corps of Engineers community

There is both indiscretion and linguistic butchery at play in some of the 221 communities that appear in Orkut when you search using the words “Indian army”. But it wasn’t the latter that prompted the Indian military to recently nose around Orkut trying to sniff out personnel who have, by the military’s stern definition, been injudicious with information.

There is always a loud honk of caution attached to validating any of the government’s suspicions, but a speed trawl through the Indian army communities in Orkut was revelatory. Most of the communities are run by firebreathing youth unconnected in any shape and form with the business of protecting the country’s borders, but who are either wannabe Top Guns or expert at the unreal intricacies of video wargames. Roughly a fifth of the communities, however, are clearly run by serving services personnel, some of whom seem to have been taken in by the vast and comforting anonymity afforded by Orkut’s 49 million members (as of April 9, 2007).

But it would be optimistic in the extreme not to expect government and military spooks to skulk around Orkut, a site that is the eighth most visited Internet ‘café’ in the world, and, more to the point, the second most visited site in India. Of Orkut’s total membership, 14.66 per cent (as of May 2007) were Indian, the second most populous membership after Brazilians.

An Indian newspaper report declared late last month that “hundreds of young Army officers are sharing information about training, postings, cell-phone numbers and even operational details through such sites raising serious security concerns”. We found that there were, indeed, significant slip-ups by some serving service personnel.

Although there aren’t “hundreds” of serving personnel doing the equivalent of drunkenly mouthing off at the bar, the number of the imprudent is hardly minor and their indiscretions are enough to taint the entire community of service persons.

The Indian Army, to whose ranks most of the maladroit belong, is reported to have sat up and taken notice—and to have overreacted by, as an army blogger told this correspondent, “by several degrees of incomprehension”. While army liaison refused to respond to calls, Sitanshu Kar, PRO of the ministry of defence, said, “I’ve read the report [in the newspaper daily], but I haven’t yet received a report. It is up to the army to investigate the matter, after which they will send us a report. Only then will the ministry look into it.”

But looking into the matter is hardly an easy flick-and-dust military matter. Capt Rajat Mishra is something of a media celebrity who has clocked appearances on TV news channels such as IBNLive and NDTV and in reports in daily newspapers. At the age of 26, the personable young man was involved in an accident in 2004, lost his right arm and his commission, and hauled himself out of a downward spiral through sheer grit to studying in the prestigious Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad. But he clearly hasn’t forgotten his glory days. His indiscretion is apparently unintended, a way of keeping in touch with a part of his life he will probably live over and over again for a long time to come.

But Ranjit Misal Nikam isn’t this easily in the clear. In his profile album, there is a single amiably direct shot of him and a fellow officer having a laugh in an operations room. Anyone with some skill, determination and digital sharpening software can pixilate into clarity the huge operations map behind him.

It’s another matter that his question in the Indian Army Corps of Engineers forum went unanswered. Not even the most laidback of service personnel would be feckless enough to advertise the Indian military’s C4I concept and strategy.

‘Camouflaged’ armymen such as Deepak “4U” are rather the norm in Orkut, and they keep information firmly buttoned up. Deepak is brusque with Orkut trawlers who enter his scrapbook uninvited, some of them officer wannabes seeking to cosy up to a soldier whose professionalism, going by his profile photograph and the non-civilian starchy way he comports himself in his scrapbook, is never for a moment in doubt.

But picking at his chevrons are nimrods like “Rohit ...Its either my way ...or highway”, who has released his mobile number in a friend’s scrapbook. In the “hw r u related to the corp…” thread in the Indian Army Ordnance Corps community, one Major Sandeep (“Sandy”) Sharma identifies himself from curlicue to combat boot, revealing his location to be “100 Reg, posted in pune” and his telephone number as “25803040”.

Like in the rest of life, the indiscreet are linked to the ingenuous by six degrees—or less—of separation. ‘Major’ Saurabh Priya Singh identifies himself in Sandy Sharma’s scrapbook in this haiku:
“Major SP Singh
AFP-07a
Management Development
Institute
Sukhrali Village
Gurgaon, Haryana
Mob- 9212570188”

Then, again, as is evident in the Indian Army-Need for Change community, Maj S P Singh is a doubting Thomas of a degree of sternness that seeks to unsettle the army’s patience.
He writes:
“Except to crib privately with each other, we in the forces are conditioned never to talk openly about the problems that we face. To compound the problem further, we are not allowed to have associations and therefore our collective voices are as it is never heard by the powers that be.
“The Army is a very very solid and strong organisation and probably that is why it is still able to deliver the best inspite of all the constraints when everything else fails in our country but the point is - For How long?

“After all for how long are we willing to carry on with whatever is given to us as an act of kindness and generosity and keep stretching ourselves on all sides?

“It is our collective responsibility and we need to appreciate that.

“Probably, acknowledging the issue can be a good start point....after all for how long do we intend to sweep everything under the carpet and carry on with our spit and polish routine of claiming everything is ‘Tickety Boo’ when it actually is not.”

The army obviously has its select band of Fifth Columnistas who like to think, but not in the barracks or in front of their superiors. Orkut affords them an avenue where the rustle of conversation can hide their questioning and their mutual prodding. Major S P Singh, whose English is commendable and of a provenance that is more academic than is encouraged in the National Defence Academy or the Short Service Commission, managed to get some speed going after the initial splutter. It’s an active forum.

The insouciant release of personal information is hardly limited to male personnel. In the WSES (O) Indian Army community, which refers to the Women’s Special Entry Scheme, various women service personnel identify themselves as working in Ordnance, Intelligence or Army Air Defence. Their thumbnails link directly to their profiles, where they are easily identifiable, down to where they live and the work they do.

The irony is that the service personnel who reveal their wherewithal in scrapbooks and threads should be so uninformed about the anonymity services that Orkut offers. Most Orkuters know that to send personal messages such as telephone numbers and email IDs, one should use the email facility that is invisible to anyone but the recipient. All but the most naïve of Orkuters know this: it’s part of the visible menu. The question, therefore is: Are Indian military personnel—at least the online social networkers—relatively ignorant of Net protocol and services?

Or does the Indian Army really need to worry?

Perhaps a dab of paranoia is good. It’s what keeps national security on its toes. Then, again, these indiscretions on what is essentially a hyperactive—if often hideously profane—social networking community are unlikely to give India’s enemies the definitive attack edge they seek. So what will China or Pakistan do with a bunch of mobile numbers if the voices at the other end are not inclined to release any more than that single loud whisper?

And it’s not that the Indian government or the military can actually rein Orkut in. The hardware that hosts the site is in residence outside India’s shores. There is nothing that the government can do to stop Orkut from moving ahead with its agenda, which is really the absence of one. Orkut’s terms of service state: “By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials.”

Perhaps the government could spend its considerable energies concentrating on communities such as Indian Cyber Army (which pops up in the search for “Indian army”). This community is a straightforward forum for ethics-impaired, youthful and characteristically callow hackers who exchange information on how to demolish whom. Dave the H4ck3r, all of 20 years old, is a hurtling, chortling train wreck who claims to have hacked into sites such as www.hyundai.com, www.marutiudyog.com, www.ntpcender.com, and www.mercedes-benz.co.in. He could be indulging

in empty boasting, but his scrapbook was, at last look, a binary Tower of Babel.
Looking after national security on the Net is a more complex affair than just dodgy service personnel. The question remains: How much damage are these loose-mouthed military Orkuters doing?