India finds that typewriters are the key to keeping secrets

The Indian High Commission in London has reverted to using typewriters to compose sensitive documents following the NSA spying scandal. Officials also apparently step out of the embassy's premises in Aldwych to discuss sensitive matters in order to dodge "dedicated" satellites and possible bugs installed on the premises.

"Top secret cables are now written on typewriters which cannot be tracked," Jamini Bhagwati, the Indian High Commissioner to London, told the Times of India. He said that no classified information was disclosed inside the embassy building and bemoaned the fact that it was "tedious" to go out into the garden every time something sensitive needed discussing.

Such protective measures follow the disclosure by the fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden that America's National Security Agency had bugged India's Permanent Mission at the United Nations in New York and its embassy in Washington. Mr Snowden has claimed that Britain's Government Communications Headquarters spying agency partnered the NSA in its operations around the world. But Mr Bhagwati said he was not aware whether GCHQ had bugged the Indian High Commission. "The British might have probably got bored with what they hear us talking about inside the embassy," he said.

The use of typewriters appears to have become something of a trend. Earlier this year, a source at the Russian service in charge of safeguarding the Kremlin's communications claimed that it returned to typewriters in the wake of the NSA leaking scandal.