Did Trudeau govt snoop on personnel of Indian high commission? | India News

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NEW DELHI: Were Indian diplomatic personnel in Canada being snooped upon on the orders of the Trudeau government? Government functionaries were discussing the worrisome possibility in light of claims made by authorities in Ottawa to the Canadian media, that PM Justin Trudeau’s allegation of “credible evidence” of India’s “potential link” to the killing of pro-Khalistan terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar was based on intelligence on communications involving India’s diplomatic personnel.
Intel officials mock idea that Indian diplomats were part of plot to kill
While India did not respond to the allegations, intelligence sources said the claim deserved a deeper probe to ascertain if unauthorised equipment was used by local law enforcement to put Indian high commission officials under illegal surveillance.
The development, coupled with the disclosure of Nijjar’s family that the terrorist used to meet with Canadian security intelligence service officers every week, has added another element of intrigue to the confrontation Trudeau has set off.

Officials, however, said as tapping the mobile phones of diplomats would be against the Vienna Convention, advanced surveillance equipment like ‘off the air’ or devices like cell-site simulators and IMSI catchers may have been used to tap in on the conversations, if at all. “Trojans, which require zero-click or one-click for activation on the user’s end, are also used in such covert snooping by computers so as to take control of the target device,” a security expert explained.
Authorities were, in any case, perplexed by the mismatch between Trudeau’s allegation and his demand that India needed to cooperate on the one hand, and his reluctance to share evidence about the “potential link” on the other.

Even as they raised the issue of illicit snooping, the intelligence officials mocked the suggestion that Indian diplomats were part of the assassination plot. “Embassy officials, leave alone those of India which asks for and enforces complete scrupulousness by its representatives abroad, would never be involved in such tasks,” said a senior government source.
Sources in the intelligence community said the Canadian intelligence could, at most, be about some tittle tattle among Indian embassy employees in the wake of Nijjar’s killing, which was snooped on illegally.

Officials highlighted the portion of news reports which quoted Canadian officials saying that the information was in the form of SIGINT (signal intelligence).
“This would require further elaboration to ascertain what kind of communication intelligence was tapped. It could just be the analysis of IP addresses showing a connection between point A and B or it could be actual conversations or an email. The likelihood of these having any specific conversations is negligible,” another intelligence official said.