Snooping in the name of national security?

Accusing the Congress party of running an "ill- informed" campaign against the government on intercepting computer data, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Friday said there is "no general snooping order" and that the Home Ministry's decision is in the interest of national security.

Ten central agencies, including CBI, ED, IB and NIA, have been authorised by the Centre to intercept, monitor and decrypt any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer resource under Information Technology Act.