India condemns snooping, info accessible only through fair means: Kapil Sibal

Since revelations of US electronic snooping, governments around the world have been gripped by insecurity (Reuters)

India will not accept any kind of surveillance as it has been reported about the US agencies snooping into e-mail and other type of communications of foreign citizens, Telecom and IT Minister Kapil Sibal said on Friday.

Related: Wary of snooping, govt may ban Gmail, Yahoo in officials communications

The Minister also said that the government can take a position on such type of surveillance by a foreign country only when it has complete information about what data and content have been accessed by snoopers.

Related: Khurshid defends US surveillance, says it is not 'snooping'

"If there is any attempt to access content we will support it through fair means. We will not accept any such manner of surveillance. We have been informed from other side that this is broad looking at trends," Sibal said at Indian Women's Press Corps at New Delhi.

He was responding to question over action from Indian government following revelation of US snooping programme into foreign e-mail and other online communications content.

"We cannot take a position either in diplomacy or domestic issues unless we are completely in control of it. Unless we know that what is accessed by some other agency outside India is data and content then only can we react. Our own agencies have not been able to figure out whether any content or data was accessed," Sibal said.

Related: US used taxpayers' money to fund snooping

According to documents provided by whistle-blower Edward Snowden, US surveillance programme that sweeps Internet usage data had 700 snooping servers installed at 150 locations around the world.