Security

Strategy for Homeland Security
11-Nov-2006
Addressed to Home Minister Mr. Shivraj Patil

Only a handful of people influence the lives of millions. It is true in politics, it is true in religion. How many religious leaders are there in India - may be less than 10,000? But they are destroying lives of millions of Indians. There is no easy solution to the problem of security. We need to look for a solution at a different level as we make some fundamental changes in our society. The levels are 

• Creation of Security shield
• Pre-empt terrorism
• Controlling religious fanaticism

Creation of Security shield

With the help of technology and manual patrolling we should be able to create a robust scalable security system with more than one fallback option. Such security system will be extremely difficult to penetrate. The technologies that can be used are as follows.

Biometric Identification

We should create an exhaustive database of people with biometric identification for every Indian and foreigners. Database should include personal identification, list of friends and relatives whom they keep personal contact with at least once a year (office colleagues, clients are excluded), job profile, trip he/she has to make for work in general like a person may say I travel between Calcutta, Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune. Any change in pattern in movement or change in list of friends/relatives should be reported in a prescribed form which can be dropped in bank or post office. I believe 80% of people work within their cities. This information must be cross verified by other parties. We need to develop a software application for this purpose.

Every Indian and foreigner should be issued with a national id card with photo and biometric id inserted in a chip.  

It is important that we track movement of people for security reason. At every entry point of cities/towns there must be a check post where security guard will swap the national id card of everyone passing through it. 

Entry to all railway stations, cinema halls, malls and other public places should be blocked with rotation gate like Calcutta metro that can be opened by swapping the national ID card. Technology is available. Secondary advantage for railways stations is that nobody can travel without ticket.

All offices should have a security system at the entrance that will check biometric identification of all visitors. This is very common in UK, US.

All entry points to religious places should be controlled with rotation gate which will be opened with national ID card. We must keep a complete record of people coming to religious places. Nowadays these places have become breeding ground for terrorism.

All hotels should verify biometric identification of their guests. Necessary software will be provided by the government.

All hotel entrance/lobby must be covered with CCTV which can be controlled remotely from police stations.

Like US we should also start taking biometric id of Indian Visa applicants in our embassy all over the world. This id can be cross checked with Interpol database and Indian database to identify if any known criminal is trying to enter into the country. When foreigners arrive at Indian port a fresh biometric id will be taken that will be matched with the id taken during issuance of Visa.

When entire neighbourhood protects terrorists, it is extremely difficult to spot terrorist within neighbourhood, specially when the neighbourhood is a slum or semi slum. I suggest such neighbourhood should be covered with brick wall or by other means with fixed number of entry points. These points will have electronic gate (with CCTV) to be opened with national ID card. This will not create much inconvenience as there will be hardly any vehicles in such areas except for two wheelers, rickshaws.

National ID card also has many other benefits

• It can be used by income tax department to track multiple bank accounts, assets.
• It can be used by crime branch
• Employer can use it for reference check.
• It will be easy to track known criminals
• It will be helpful in tracking illegal immigrants.

CCTV

CCTV has two advantages. 1. It can detect suspicious movements, 2. It can provide clear footage of the criminals when a crime is committed that can be used by investing officer to capture and prosecute the criminal. So, we have to have extensive use of CCTV.

 In metro cities we must install hundreds of CCTV all over the place specially in the railway stations, bus terminus, and metro stations. We must employ 1,000 people in each city to monitor those CCTV images for suspicious movements and vandalism. We can tie up with British police for training. They do similar things quite effectively primarily to check vandalism.

CCTV should be installed in all private/public buses, local train compartments. It already started in Bombay buses.

CCTV should also be installed in malls, school/colleges, public offices, religious places, embassies.

X-Ray

• All hotels must have an X-ray machine for scanning luggage of the guests.
• All stations in the local train route and big stations like Allahabad should have X-ray machine for scanning of the bags of the passenger. Definitely it requires lot of investment. But it will also generate employment. We can recover some of the cost by charging Rs 5 per bag for screening. Of course we cannot charge poor people.

Dog Squad

Dogs are most effective in detecting bombs, drugs, RDX and other dangerous materials. Dogs can be used in railway stations, airports, trains, malls or any other places where manual checking will cause inconvenience and delay or a quick second level of checking is required. Each state should have at least 100 dogs in their squad.

Google Earth

Google earth provides detailed images of the earth. Image is overlaid by roads, building, rivers, and railway tracks. These images will be very helpful in profiling zones in sensitive areas and identifying terrorist routes.

Pre-empt Terrorism

Fight against terrorism is a continuous process. We must proactively look for possible terrorist/criminals all the time. However fight against terrorist/criminals should not lead us in a situation where innocent people feel harassed.

Reference Check

Reference check should be made mandatory. Everyone living in a metro must be referred by two relatives, if any or two neighbours or employer, if any. If the person moves to a new place permanently or temporarily, he/she must report to police for verification. Police should verify the newcomer and notify next door neighbour that verification is complete. If the next door neighbour does not receive any call from police they should inform police about new neighbour. New person has to find two neighbours within 3 months for reference.

Any guest, friends or relatives who will be staying more than 3 days from other cities/town must swap their national id along with the national id of the owner of the house in the nearest bank/post office.

Profiling

Profiling of people is a very scientific way of utilizing the resources, manpower and hardware, at hand in a most optimum manner to provide effective security to each and everyone living in India. Profiling should be based on probability of a person to be a criminal/terrorist. Probability should be defined in terms High, Medium, Low. Another dimension of profiling could be distinguishing between criminal/terrorists and sympathizers of terrorists. Profiling should not be based on religion, or caste or language.

We also need to find the chance of a known criminal to be a terrorist. Terrorists are more dangerous than criminals.

Once we complete the profiling, number of suspected persons should be further classified as highly dangerous, dangerous and trouble maker. In each category I believe number of people may not be more than 5000, 30,000 and 90,000 respectively.

Intelligence Gathering

We have to step up intelligence gathering process by conventional way through informer and by tapping telephone conversation, letters and emails. Profiling of people would help to identify who to tap to. Whenever anyone starting internet sessions in internet café or any public internet facility, national id of the person should be taken before the start of the session. Internet service providers should be able to link the dynamic IP address of the machine with the person. If the person falls under suspected category, copy of entire internet traffic should be forwarded to crime branch automatically. With proper profiling of people it is possible to track most dangerous people quite effectively.

Control Movement of People in Embassy

Entry point of all embassies should be brought under CCTV surveillance. Whoever is entering into the embassy including visa applicants (except high ranking embassy staff) must be screened by Indian security personnel with metal detector. All vehicles entering/coming out of the embassy must be thoroughly searched.

Brain Mapping

Brain mapping is an emerging technology which has the potential to change our criminal justice system for ever. This technology is stable enough to detect lie beyond reasonable doubt. It is imperative that we increasingly rely on this technology to fight against terrorism. After we identified most dangerous people through profiling, we should put them into brain mapping test for verification. Today only Bangalore has this facility. We should have such facility every small town all over India.

Searching religious places

All religious places regardless of religion should be thoroughly searched and protected by special security forces permanently so that insurgents cannot enter these places. All vehicles including cycles entering and leaving out of these places should be thoroughly searched and X-rayed.

People should not be allowed to carry anything in religious place not even water bottles.

If a religious place does not have enough emergency exits, it should be closed for public.

Number of people entering in a religious place should not be more than the place can accommodate.

In each religion there are few occasions when thousands of worshipers gather in a particular place like ‘Ganga Sagar’ or ‘Kumbha Mela’ or ‘Id-ul fitr’ and many others. We must continuously monitor the number of people coming to such places. When the number reaches at an alarming level, entry must be restricted. In such places people have to come completely empty handed. Everyone must be subject to body search.

Security Workshop

Police should closely interact with people proactively. Common people regard police force as corrupt and bribe taker. Police need to change their image. I am not going to discuss how it can be done. But police must arrange regular workshop with people in each locality once in two months on security, how to be on guard, how to react if terrorist strikes. They have to reassure people that no particular community is targeted. They must be polite, professional and honest. I think it is almost impossible task to make our police force honest. Success of fight against terrorism depends largely on the honesty of police force. During the workshop parents/guardians should be reminded constantly to monitor movements of their children.

Control International Border

Our international border runs into hundreds of miles of plain land, mountains and sea. For plain lands electric fencing and metal road along the border will help to detect infiltration greatly. However not all plain land border have metal road or fencing. We should have them as quickly as possible. We should also have

• Helicopters patrolling the border 24 X 7.
• Hidden motion detection camera planted every 1/10^th of a mile.

It is difficult to patrol mountain area like Kashmir and north east India. A terrorist will pass through mountain road or valley between mountains. We can have 

• Electric fencing running across the valley. It may run hundreds of mile.
• Check posts on the mountain roads to check national ids of the passengers.
• Helicopter patrolling by security forces with search light.
• Installing 10,000 high tower search light and zoom camera across the valley to be monitored remotely.
• Permitting only registered vehicle with GPS system installed to track the movement. Base station should be able to detect if the GPS system is switched off in the vehicle.

For coastal area we can have similar kind of electric fencing on the surface of water ½ km from the shore. Movement of ships, trolley, fishing boat has a definite route I believe. We also have to increase coastal guard patrol drastically.

Hunt for Weapon

We have to launch massive hunt for weapon in houses/hotels/slums/party offices/religious places/apartments in multi storied building in presence of human right activists or prominent personalities to avoid police harassment. Weapons include anything which can kill people from AK47 to RDX to country made bombs to swords to knives. If we can search 2000 places per day and continue for 6 months, we will be able to unearth 95% of hidden weapon. However searching for weapons is a continuous process. A large cache of weapon will be hidden by political parties. Weapons may be hidden in forest or underground. Bottom line is that we have to cut the supply of weapons for terrorist/criminal activities.

Gun Licence

Withdraw hundreds of gun licences issued to various political/social people unless it is absolutely required. We do not understand why Mr. Pravin Mahajan had a licensed revolver? No private companies should be allowed to buy/sell guns. Issue license for knives bigger than 6 inches to fisherman or slaughter house.

Clear Message

Government should give clear message not only to terrorists but also to those who indirectly encourage terrorism. Political leadership must have courage and conviction to ban dangerous religious organizations be it ‘Bajrang Dal’ or SIMI. Government should destroy the infrastructure of these organisations completely. Government should not hesitate to arrest and prosecute any person who is a threat to communal harmony regardless of their social or religious status.

Checking Lorry/Matador/Buses

When weapons or RDX are smuggled through international border, they hop from one place to another before it reaches its final destination. Mode of transportation quite often is lorry/matador or even buses. We have to intercept those smuggled arms at one of its hopping stops. All lorry/matador/bus drivers/conductors along with their owners should pass through thorough reference check. Who is driving which lorry/matador/bus and the entire journey route must be recorded through internet in advance. When the lorry/matador/bus passes through various check post, identity must be cross verified with the help of software. All lorries/matadors/buses must be fitted with GPS to track their movements.

Checking passenger Vehicles

All entry point of cities and towns must have number of automatic gates which will record registration number of each vehicle passing through these gates. All vehicles should be given special number plate which cannot be tampered with. Such technology is available. Each vehicle entering or leaving the city or town must be manually searched at the check post. It might cause delay in traffic movement. But that is a small price everyone will be willing to pay for better security.

Restrict bomb material.

All chemicals which can potentially be used in explosive should be heavily controlled and accounted for. This is the only way we can restrict home made deadly bomb. Raw materials for bombs, be it a crude one or sophisticated one, are easily available all over India particularly with cadres of political parties.

Controlling Religious Fanaticism

Monitoring religious institutes

There must be a permanent observer in all religious schools to monitor type of teaching being imparted. All religious schools must be brought under either CBSC or ICSE or respective state education board. No religious school can run their own curriculum. Any religious school lacking adequate teaching staff, infrastructure must be closed down.

Religious fanaticism

In India there are too many religious leaders. Many of them are self proclaimed guru with millions of followers. Not all of them are spiritual. Religion is most sensitive issue all over the world. We all love to go to religious places, listen to spiritual leaders, like to perform various kinds of rituals and accept some religious leader as our guru whom we want to follow blindly. Now time has come to measure the holiness of these spiritual leaders who are mushrooming all over the country. I have few suggestions to control religious fanaticism. 

• Most of the religious festivals in India are good for society and economy. However there are few festivals which triggers vandalism or fanaticism must be stopped or reduced in number.
• Unauthorised religious places specially road side small worship places needs to be destroyed
• Identify hypocritical leaders and bar them from calling religious leader
• Government of India should issue licence to religious persons like monks, priests, kazis and other similar profiles after they pass certain exam. A clear hierarchy should be defined with spiritual leader at the top. A process must be defined to become a spiritual leader. A spiritual leader will be those who are tolerant about other religions and can speak fluently on any religion.
• Only spiritual leader can interact with people, can have disciples and can talk on holy script of their religion in public. Number of spiritual leaders in each religion must be limited to few. 
• Other people in the hierarchy cannot make public speech.
• If a religious person creates communal tension directly or indirectly, he/she will lose his/her licence.
• All public speeches of these religious persons must be video recorded.
• Religious persons cannot give any ‘fatwa’.
• Government of India should define spirituality in an unambiguous term. Government must aggressively monitor the personal life of the religious persons. Any non conformance to spirituality will lead to cancellation of licence.
• Children less than 18 should not be exposed to any religious teaching except for telling story on life of  prophet Mohammad or Lord Krishna or Jesus Christ or Guru Nanak and others and interesting stories from Holy Bible, Holy Koran, Ramayana, Mahabharata and other religious scripts. Government of India must design such stories in the form of books or animations in one single volume. Children may read these books/animations at home.
• Religion in any form should not be taught/discussed in any school/colleges including religious schools/colleges. Most of the religious schools/colleges provide some form of prayer room. Each student must be allowed to offer prayer in his/her own way e.g.  a Muslim student must be allowed to perform ‘namaz’ in the prayer hall of Ramakrishna Mission. Nobody should be allowed to read/discuss from religious scripts in the prayer hall. 

Role of TV

Currently there are four private TV channels which discuss religion. There is no need to control those channels by government. However I have few suggestions. 

• No foreign religious channel should be allowed in India.
• Only spiritual leaders should be allowed to speak in TV.
• Every spiritual leader should speak on every religion. Otherwise they must lose their licence.

Recovering the cost

The cost of all these security measures may run into anything between Rs 10,000 to 20,000 crore rupees. However ROI would be much bigger. Such investment has many positive effects

·         It will generate large number of employment.

·         It will open up new investment opportunity

·         Private sectors should be invited to research and manufacture state of art security devices.

·         Some of the cost can be recovered by

o    Security cess of 0.5% on tax paid for individual and 1% for corporate.

o    Security subscription of 1% of total income for every earning Indian.

o    Introduce security toll of Rs 1 to 5 when vehicles (car, van, lorry, matador, tanker etc) move from one town to another. However passenger public buses may be exempted.

o    Introduce security tax of 10% for train tickets exceeding Rs 1,000.

o    Let ONGC pay security cess of Rs 0.50 per litre of petrol and Rs 0.25 per litre of diesel.

o    Security service charge of 1% on all purchase over and above Rs 3,000.

o    Security production duty of 1% on all goods whose MRP exceed Rs 3,000.

o    Security entry fee of Rs 1 to 5 to all religious places depending on the locality and popularity of the religious place. However entry fee should be relaxed for couple of hours during off peak so that poor people can enter.

o    Encouraging neighbourhood to deploy their own CCTV and other security arrangements

o    Charge Rs 100 to Rs 400 (one time) for each member of the family for biometric ID card depending on family income. A four member family with income of Rs 10,000 per month should be able to pay Rs 800 for the 4 ID cards.