“If Indian laws relating to privacy of information of ordinary Indian citizens have been violated, surely we would find it unacceptable,” said the Spokesperson of the Indian External Affairs Ministry here on Tuesday.

A former CIA agent, Edward Snowden, who was holed up in a Hong Kong hotel room, has revealed to Washington Post and Guardian that NSA has been using tech giants Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, Skype and YouTube to spy on private information of users around the world. The programme codenamed PRISM has been launched since 2007 for this purpose.

Akbaruddin said “we are concerned and surprised about it.”

Assuring that this issue would be taken up at appropriate level, he said : ”Between India and the US we have a Cyber Security Dialogue, and it is coordinated by the National Security Councils on both the sides. We feel that this is the appropriate forum to discuss such issues. We intend to seek information and details during consultations between interlocutors from both sides on this matter in that appropriate forum.”

He, however, described the situation as an evolving one. “Every day we find new issues coming up. Rather than jump to conclusions at this stage, we will take it as it evolves and have a better understanding and a clearer paradigm of how to tackle this issue once the broader parameters of this in its entirety are available for us,” he said.