New Delhi, India – India has exempted an Israeli phone-hacking company from domestic procurement rules, enabling the sale of phone-extraction products and surveillance technology to government agencies while drawing criticism from privacy advocates and rights groups. An investigation by the digital-rights organization Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) revealed that Indian Home Minister Amit Shah authorized waivers from domestic manufacturing preference regulations, allowing government forensic institutions to acquire at least 422 foreign technology items, including solutions from the Israeli firm Cellebrite.
Modi’s federal administration and states governed by his Bharatiya Janata Party are not the sole purchasers of this technology. States administered by the opposition Indian National Congress, such as Himachal Pradesh, Keralam, and Karnataka, have similarly bought phone-extraction and cloning instruments.
Examined documents indicate that India's digital surveillance capabilities extend beyond cloning phones and bypassing passwords to retrieving cloud-based information from social media platforms, including Instagram, X, and Tinder, alongside data from smart home devices like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home. Experts note that current Indian legislation provides minimal oversight regarding expansive surveillance, leaving these data extractions operating within a legal grey zone.
Legal professionals emphasize that these measures facilitate broader mass surveillance and deeper, more intrusive data collection that paints a comprehensive picture of an individual's life. A reviewed Ministry of Home Affairs letter dated January 7 shows Shah approved a one-year waiver of local manufacturing rules to facilitate the purchase of at least 422 forensic items. A subsequent ministry letter dated January 20 indicated that Shah authorized the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to acquire Cellebrite’s Premium Tool on a three-year license valued at roughly 50 million rupees.
Tender specifications reviewed by analysts show that the acquired software must be capable of utilizing login tokens recovered from confiscated phones or computers to access more than 100 cloud services. Although a regulatory exemption does not definitively confirm specific agency purchases, it outlines the broad forensic capabilities made available to Indian authorities.
Among the exempted items, the IFF identified 118 digital and multimedia forensics products, including Cellebrite tools such as Pathfinder, Inseyets On-Prem Pro, and Inseyets Offline. Additional foreign technologies included software from companies such as Magnet, MSAB, Oxygen Forensics, and Belkasoft, as well as open-source intelligence and dark-web monitoring applications.
A bid proposal issued by the Delhi Police for its National Cyber Forensic Laboratory requested software capable of bypassing passwords across major operating systems, recovering browser histories and deleted files, identifying VPN traces, and executing full file system extractions. Further specifications demanded all-in-one systems to access more than 100 cloud services, messaging platforms, and dating applications using recovered login credentials, alongside data retrieval from drones, wearables, and smart home assistants. Requests for comment sent to the NIA, the Home Ministry, and the home departments of Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, and Keralam went unanswered prior to publication.
The expansion of these digital surveillance powers has direct implications for critics of the government. Following street protests in New Delhi, popular YouTuber and government critic Dhruv Rathee was detained at his home by Delhi Police, who seized his phone. Rathee subsequently expressed concerns that authorities attempted to clone his device using advanced extraction tools.