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India Now Wants Access To Google and Skype

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the voip-is-hoip dept.

crabel writes "A couple of weeks ago India went after RIM and its mail service; it has extended its hunger for data now to all telecommunications. All telecom companies have to give them access to all voice over IP services that go in/out or happen within the country. Heck, they are even going after VPNs used by corporate employees working remotely."

10 of 366 comments (clear)

  1. Is India trying to *stab* its economy? by FooAtWFU · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Demanding access to all the corporate VPNs is a great way to make companies more skittish about outsourcing there!

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    1. Re:Is India trying to *stab* its economy? by CaptBubba · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is especially true considering just how notoriously corrupt a lot of the Indian government is. It has been featured on NPR and other news outlets as being a large impediment to business.

      Then you will have someone in a position where they have access to all of your company's secure communications? For the price of a bribe anyone could find out proprietary information that could sink your company or they could gain access to listen in on calls and glean account information for identity theft or just to solicit customers.

    2. Re:Is India trying to *stab* its economy? by pavera · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This really wouldn't be too uncommon. IBM has to have very detailed technical conversations/emails/etc with outsourced people in India, it would not take much to determine their future plans, product launches, progress, feature sets, etc. If you're competing with IBM and have access to all this information, you can easily beat them in the game. Same goes for any company with outsourced workers in India. It's not necessarily that it would "quickly sink" IBM, but it could easily quickly sink a new product launch, or a new division... And if you're a startup, and IBM, HP, or MSFT has access to this information that you've passed off to your outsourced labor, it could very quickly sink your company. IBM releases your product 2 months before you do you're done.

      You mentioned "thinking about your internal security" the problem isn't internal security, it is that your perceived internal security now has an open spigot to the government of India... you have no internal security by default. Employees have to be able to discuss project progress, plans, etc. You have to have product meetings, there has to be communication about these things or nothing will ever get done. And the nature of these discussions if revealed to a third party can easily spell doom to a product, business division, or startup.

      Further, it would be a huge temptation to use this information to trade stocks... Think you overhear an HP conversation where its revealed that they just lost a major customer to IBM, or they are months behind schedule on a new product... You've finally found step 2
      1) Use gov't access to private communication to glean insider information
      2) Short/Buy stock as appropriate
      3) Wait for information to become public/earnings release
      4) Profit

  2. Re:Well... by jgagnon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Considering how many businesses still flock to China with relatively little protection for their IP, I doubt this will affect business relations much as long as it is more profitable to do business there than elsewhere.

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  3. Re:Sevens Sins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Given that the "Seven Deadly Sins" are a Christian construct and only 2.3% of India's population is Christian, I don't think a nation state with polytheistic Hindu as it's official religion will care much about your datum.

  4. Re:Well... by moogied · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Flamebait?! This is a VERY valid statement. If have sensitive documents and do a lot of work in India because you own a call center there or something, you would most certainty need to look at this.

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  5. how is this NOT an outlawing of encryption? by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    so let me get this straight. the indian government thinks it has a RIGHT to intercept all communication that it wants to (sans warrant, mind you).

    does that essentially make personal end-to-end encryption illegal? it has to! the concept of you being able to conceal your comms is in the process of being ILLEGAL there.

    people are commenting on 'well, just use SSH or SSL or ...'.

    but you are missing the point. if they insist on getting access to all comms, you think they'll tolerate people doing an end-run around this?

    the VERY next step is to identify users who side-step this with their own encryption layer and persecute them, one way or another. it has to follow. first you require all data to be sniffable and then you go after those that won't agree.

    I remember about 20 yrs or so ago, it was illegal for french citizens to use encryption (details are fuzzy; I may not have this exactly accurate). but france was some kind of exception and vendors had to do all kinds of backflips to sell to french companies. are we going back to shit like this, again??

    I think we are. its absolutely coming that encryption will be deemed 'munitions' again. or, encryption that WORKS; the bullshit encryption you think you can trust but is breakable will be 'allowed' to you to keep you feeling like you have some control.

    I guess its now: any encryption that is legal is encryption you cannot trust.

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    1. Re:how is this NOT an outlawing of encryption? by Yvanhoe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      people are commenting on 'well, just use SSH or SSL or ...'. but you are missing the point. if they insist on getting access to all comms, you think they'll tolerate people doing an end-run around this?

      I think the legislators miss the point about "encrypted VPN" being such a trivial technology. They probably think there must be around 100 big companies doing that in India right now and they will soon discover that their law is inadapted. Back to the drawing board.

      I remember about 20 yrs or so ago, it was illegal for french citizens to use encryption (details are fuzzy; I may not have this exactly accurate). but france was some kind of exception and vendors had to do all kinds of backflips to sell to french companies. are we going back to shit like this, again??

      There was a limitation to the key length. More than a certain length was considered "military material" and required some authorization. Mind you we were happily generating 1024 bits keys (the limitation was something ridiculous. IIRC but it was something like 56 bits), using them routinely. I doubt anyone has ever been prosecuted for this. It bothered vendors though. We do that a lot in France : vote bad laws, do not apply them, use them as a precedent to vote even worse laws, rinse, repeat.

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      The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
  6. Re:Not A Surprise by jgagnon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This level of monitoring without transparency will just make corruption easier.

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  7. Re:Going too far, BUT... by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And Indian civil society is not going to take it

    Sure they will.

    Over the past ten years the government of the USA has eroded the civil rights in your nation, and the citizens by and large have said "meh" and gone back to watching Kate Gosselin on "Dancing with the Stars." Why should India be any different?