[1][4] Security agencies were looking to build a system that could monitor Internet traffic on a real time basis due to the rapidly escalating threat posed by terrorist and criminal elements using data communication, which had brought service providers like BlackBerry, Skype and Gmail into the focus of law enforcement agencies.
It had serious security reservations about involvement of an international private company in such a sensitive project, and had doubts about NTRO's ability to operate, maintain and upgrade their system independently.
[3] NETRA can analyse voice traffic passing through software such as Skype and Google Talk, and intercept messages with keywords such as 'attack', 'bomb', 'blast' or 'kill' in real-time[5] from the enormous number of tweets, status updates, emails, instant messaging transcripts, internet calls, blogs, forums and even images generated on the internet to obtain the desired intelligence.
The system with RAW analyses large amount of international data which crosses through the internet networks in India.
[1] Netra's deployment was discussed in 2013 by an apex inter-ministerial group headed by DoT, and included representative from the Cabinet Secretariat, Ministry of Home Affairs, DRDO, CAIR, Intelligence Bureau, C-DoT and Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).