Navy bans pen drives as gifts

JAYRAM

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S RAMA KRISHNA NEW DELHI | 18th Mar


The Indian Navy has banned its personnel from accepting pen-drives and external hard discs as gifts from arms manufacturers and has disabled all USB ports in its official computers. Security breach has been cited as the reason behind the move. The naval headquarters has sent a letter to this effect to all naval formations.

During presentations and defence exhibitions, arms manufacturing companies generally give pen drives containing brochures of the companies and their products to save space. The pen drive or the external hard disc has inbuilt software to detect information using key-word search when plugged to a computer's USB port. The accessed information can be seen by the source server of the arms manufacturer or the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), who may have gifted the device, when the Navy computer is logged onto the internet. Thus, there is always a possibility that classified information about naval formations may get leaked.

A Navy officer told this newspaper that as a computer has three USB ports on an average, a huge number of USB ports have had to be disabled.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Army do not allow the use of pen drives on official computers. An IAF official told this newspaper that pen drives can be used on certain stand-alone computers after taking permission, according to an existing IT rule followed by the service.

It may be noted that in the naval war-room leak case in 2005, two pen drives were used to smuggle out around 7,000 pages from the naval operations room. The case was referred to the CBI for investigation, in which former Navy chief Arun Prakash's relative Shankaran was named.

The move to ban pen drive comes in the wake of recent developments like four technical officers in the Mumbai-based Western Naval Command possessing classified professional information on their personal computers. The officers, who are facing a Board of Inquiry, have also been accused of making public classified information through social networking sites such as Facebook. Two of these four officers are likely to be dismissed from service soon.

It may be noted that in June 2011 the Navy directed its officers to either delete their social networking accounts or minimise the information about and photographs of their locations they put up on these sites. The matter came to light when officers, particularly those in Russia or sailing there on overseas deployment, uploaded on these sites information about ships and submarines they were posted in.

Earlier, the Indian Army too asked its personnel to refrain from giving out too much information on social networking sites. It was found that officers were giving out their locations, phone numbers and weapons on their profile pages and through photographs and status updates.


www.sunday-guardian.com/news/navy-bans-pen-drives-as-gifts
 

Ray

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Gifts from arms dealers or their reps were never allowed.

So, where is the question of accepting of pen drives and external hard disks come from?

Motivated article.
 

nitesh

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^^
Sir, I guess it is mostly pointed towards the people who takes decisions related to IT infrastructure, it is common to gift pen drives/ external hard disks in seminars. Generally pen drives given as gifts contain the content of the seminar, to let people have second look at the presentations.
 

Ray

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^^
Sir, I guess it is mostly pointed towards the people who takes decisions related to IT infrastructure, it is common to gift pen drives/ external hard disks in seminars. Generally pen drives given as gifts contain the content of the seminar, to let people have second look at the presentations.
I agree.

However, when a presentation is given to the military, it is usually in military areas and entry of personnel and items are frisked and segregated.

Therefore, pen drives and external hard disks would be removed.

Even if it were in hotel conference halls, the hall would have been debugged and likewise entry would be under scrutiny.
 

nitesh

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I agree.

However, when a presentation is given to the military, it is usually in military areas and entry of personnel and items are frisked and segregated.

Therefore, pen drives and external hard disks would be removed.

Even if it were in hotel conference halls, the hall would have been debugged and likewise entry would be under scrutiny.
No pen drives/ external disks are allowed as of now, if any one has to give presentations, he/she has to explicitly take permission for bringing a laptop and still no external drive is allowed. Or send the presentation before hand to the concerned person and use some internal machine for presentation.

Regarding hotel halls and all sir, will be too difficult, because a vendor can invite customers for some presentations and give away gifts, normally it is accompanied with drinks and lunch/dinner :D
 

Ray

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Nitesh,

Amongst those mingling will be the FS guys.

Risky!
 

Ray

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Larkins spy case accused absconding
Pradeep Rana, TNN May 18, 2003, 04.00am IST

NEW DELHI: The saga of the infamous Larkins spy scandal, which rocked the country's defence establishment in the 1980s, continues. In the latest development, one of the convicted brothers, Air Vice Marshal (retd) K H Larkins, has been declared 'absconding.'

Nonbailable warrants have been issued against both brothers K H Larkins and Major General (retired) F D Larkins, in their 80s now after their appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court last month.

The Larkins have been out on bail since 1989, after serving four years of their 10year prison terms. Now, after dismissal of their appeal, the Larkins have to surrender and serve their remaining sentence.

However, K H Larkins' present whereabouts are unknown. "He no longer lives at the Goa address provided to the court at the beginning of trial. Now he is said to be living with a relative in Sri Lanka," says special public prosecutor B R Handa.

In 2001, When the Delhi High Court dismissed their appeal against their 1985 conviction by the trial court, K H Larkins was living in Australia with his daughter. He apparently returned to India and filed the appeal in the Supreme Court.

The seniormost military officers ever to be convicted of espionage, the Larkins brother and two others, LtColonel (retd) Jasbir Singh and arms dealer Jaspal Singh Gill, were charged with passing on classified military documents to US intelligence officials.

While the Larkins brothers and Singh were sentenced to 10year terms, Gill got two years. The high court later acquitted Gill and Singh. The State's appeal against their acquittal is still pending in the Supreme Court.

The spy ring was detected in April 1983, but the government ordered further surveillance for another seven months in view of ramifications involved in arresting such senior officials. F D Larkins was caught redhanded on November 18, 1983, while was passing documents to an American. K H Larkins was also arrested the next day.

Larkins spy case accused absconding - Times Of India
 

nitesh

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Yes sir, agree it is risky, it seems to me move in the right direction
 

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