Indian Government Threatens RIM, Skype With Ban

gauharjk writes "India's Department of Telecommunications has been asked by the government to serve a notice to Skype and Research In Motion to ensure that their email and other data services comply with formats that can be read by security and intelligence agencies, or face a ban in India if they do not comply within 15 days. A similar notice is also being sent to Google, asking it to provide access to content on Gmail in a readable format."

Comments

This is all from the Mumbai terror attacks

[Wyatt Earp]

The terrorists used mobile phones and tools like Google Earth to plan, coordinate and execute the operations, India and Israel have been howling about those tools ever since.

Re:This is all from the Mumbai terror attacks

[kawabago]

Bank robbers usually escape in cars so maybe we should ban automobiles to cut down on the number of bank robberies! Its' the same logic.

Re:This is all from the Mumbai terror attacks

[0123456]

Why is it always cars for the analogies? Why not ducks? Or oranges?

It's not easy for a bank robber to escape on a duck.

Re:This is all from the Mumbai terror attacks

[XSpud]

It's not easy for a bank robber to escape on a duck.

Are you sure? AFAIK no bank robber has ever been caught when escaping on a duck.

Re:This is all from the Mumbai terror attacks

[ghee22]

Bank robbers usually escape in cars so maybe we should ban automobiles to cut down on the number of bank robberies! Its' the same logic.

To be fair, the automobiles have 15 days to comply with publishing who is in the car and coordinates of all travel.

But if students in India can't access Google,

[sconeu]

How will they post their homework problems on comp.lang.c++ for us to solve?

Re:But if students in India can't access Google,

[Jhon]

"1) P=NP?"
P="BOB"
NP="BOB"
if P=NP then write("TRUE!")

"2) List and explain three one-way functions."
Birth (just try to go back the other way)
Sex (Well, this is kind of an while/endwhile or some other type of loop)
Death (see Birth)

"3) List five rhymes for the word "orange"."
Door Hinge
Beer Binge
Infringe
Dope Syringe
Spine twinge

Governments are the problem, not the solution

[VTEngineer]

they have no right whatsoever to read email traffic. Terrorists have officially won as government is leveraging attacks to increase their power over all. Wake up people, government is the problem. Terrorists, even when very successful, effect a tiny percentage of a population. Yet, the government grows more powerful over all in order to supposedly protect the population. This is about control, not protection. Such a shame that so may are willing to throw away their rights in the face of terror. The terrorists have won. Now they are fighting over who will control the levers of power. The citizens have already lost all liberty.

Acceptable...

[Todd Knarr]

The proper response from Google should be a simple "Your terms are acceptable.". Followed by all IP addresses assigned in India getting only a "403 Forbidden" page when accessing any Google service, and all search results leading to sites located in India or operated by Indian entities being removed from the listings. For extra Bastard points, all e-mail originating from Indian addresses gets rejected and all phone calls from India get a no-service tone.

oh, please can I take that call google?

[CFD339]

Hello? Yes, this is technical support for gmail applications. Am I having talk with government of India?
Yes. I understand that you are having difficulty with reading emails of your populations.
Have you been plugging your monitor into the plug on the back of the computer?
Excellent. I am so very sorry you are still having the problems. We are checking now your network cables......

Etc....