Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

30 of 366 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by panda · · Score: 5, Informative

    Fuck doing business with India or Indian corporation/nationals.

    --
    Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
    1. 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.

      --
      Remember to maintain your supply of /facepalm oil to prevent chafing.
    2. Re:Well... by HungryHobo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm not sure I'd even trust certs issued by any companies based in india at this point.

      Anyone have any suggestions which cert authorities I should be excluding?

    3. 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.

      --
      So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
    4. Re:Well... by tophermeyer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'll second that because I see you got modded flamebait as well. It's nothing against Indians or companies that operate in India, but data disclosure is something you need to be aware of. If a company is going to be distributing your information you need to know who it goes to and why they want it. The fact that this would apply to every company that operates in India seems very relevant.

      Maybe you decide it's ok that the Indian government gets ahold of your data. Maybe your data is sensitive and you don't want any government obtaining it. It's worth paying attention to at the very least.

    5. Re:Well... by delinear · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unfortunately, for anyone who cares about how their data is used, it's the companies who will make the decision. I might switch my bank to one I consider more secure only to find in two months time that they intend to outsource key parts of the business. I wonder if we'll eventually see a niche market in organisations which guarantee to keep your data within the boundaries of your own country (then you only have to worry about your own government getting their hands on it).

    6. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The Indian side of me understands completely where they are coming from. Shit, America is doing the same thing, just undercover. India is a large target for terrorist attacks and this is one way they can monitor the Indian public and anyone who communicates with the Indian public for any terrorist activities.

      I'm not saying its right, based on American laws...but what native Indian is going to fight this? They all want to be safe. They don't want to worry about another Mumbai attack.

      The American side of me understands where most of the posts here are coming from. Invasion of privacy, corrupt governments using information against its own people, and the thought of someone having all information about you at their fingertips. Again, this all happens in America, but there are atleast some laws that protect us just a little.

      To the Indian government: I hope you can come up with another way to protect our people. Demanding things from businesses such as this is a truly poor choice for international business and, eventually, the trust of your people in you. Get that census thing done right, give every Indian an ID number, map out all of the towns in the country...pretty much turn India into today's US. Train a good military force, and protect the borders. It's time to play some good defense, and when called for, put that offense into effect.

    7. Re:Well... by webminer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Wow! This comment got modded 'insightful'? Really? Indian govt trying to do what US govt already does invites such hateful comments. Why am I not surprised. As usual Americans dont want to acknowledge the reality. Their govt already intercepts every possible communication. But when a foreign govt does it, suddenly there is a backlash. Atleast India is going public. BTW, China already does this. So, fuck US and China as well.

    8. Re:Well... by jgagnon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And that patent in China means far less than it does in the US. In China, companies copy products and ideas from other companies all the time, with little risk of losing more than they stand to gain by doing so.

      Now in India you may lose trade secrets (schematics, blue prints, secret recipes, etc.) simply because your email is intercepted by a corrupt government official that hands it off to your competitor for a kickback.

      Either way your company loses something that you can't easily get back. These situations are not all that different.

      --
      Remember to maintain your supply of /facepalm oil to prevent chafing.
    9. Re:Well... by DrgnDancer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Businesses bend over to comply with China because of it's massive population that they can exploit. Either to harness them as cheap manufacturing or to get their Internet dollars. India can't compete on either count.

      Bwa-huhn? China's population is greater than India's, true, but only by 150 million people or so. According to Wikipedia, China has 1.34 billion people vs. India's 1.19 billion. Granted 150 million people is a pretty big number (it's slightly under half the total population of the US), but as a percentage China's population isn't that much bigger than India's. Certainly they're close enough that the effort expended to separate people from their Rupees should be roughly equal to the effort expended to separate people form their Yen.

      --
      I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
    10. Re:Well... by Shotgun · · Score: 3, Informative

      Case in point. In the '93 time frame, I worked in a AT&T factory (before they split off Lucent). One of the devices we manufactured was a small device that you connected to your telephone headset to encrypt your conversation (the other end would have to have a similar device).

      The US government caught wind of it, came in and bought all the stock, and paid AT&T to not produce any more.

      All the digital switches we produced were required by law to have a backdoor that the government could use at will to monitor calls.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
  2. 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!

    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
    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

  3. well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe this is a good thing, in a way. maybe if India requires access to corporate vpn, it will dissuade security-conscious companies, such as a large, multinational, 3-lettered one, from outsourcing to india

  4. vpns? maybe outsourcing will slow down, then. by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    trying to look at the bright side (sort of). selfishly, I realize that-

    but if there is fear in US companies that they can no longer trust people in india (eg, tech workers) because the risk of losing their competitive edge either to the government or other companies might be too much.

    if I had signature authority on outsourcing for a company, I'd strongly reconsider pulling back any 'sensitive' work that is being done there. as of now, its no longer 'secure' (not sure it ever really was but now its totally worthless as a trustable domain).

    this could actually help tech workers in the US. in a left-handed kind of way, that is.

    suddenly, I'm all for india filtering and spying on its citizens!

    --

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  5. If only ... by m0s3m8n · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If only all google, skype, and others would just stop service for 1 day, maybe the Indian Government would reconsider. But that would probably be called collusion or something and branded illegal. Were is the State Department? Are they trying to defuse the situation? I ask because I don't know if they have any involvement.

    --
    Conservative, mod down for violating /. political norms.
  6. 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.

  7. Not A Surprise by anonymousNR · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When I was doing my masters(in India) , my friend through his relative was able to get a project with DRDO(One of India's Defence Research Department).
    His project was to develop a GUI in QT in linux for the Data Packet Sniffer program they already had in place, yes it reads all the incoming and outgoing emails of all the employees
    , and everybody knows about this and nobody cares about it.
    India has bigger problems called Corruption,Terrorism,Communal Conflicts to deal with that everyone is treated Guilty until proven Innocent.

    --
    -- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
    1. Re:Not A Surprise by jgagnon · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

      --
      Remember to maintain your supply of /facepalm oil to prevent chafing.
  8. S/MIME by Lord+Ender · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is a solution: Use S/MIME. This is the email encryption standard supported by all major mail clients without need for plugins. It can even work with web-based gmail using a firefox addon: http://richard.jones.name/google-hacks/gmail-smime/gmail-smime.html

    You can create your own certificates or get free certificates from places like Comodo.

    One quirk of S/MIME is that the subject line is not encrypted. This is a good place to add the text "India can suck my beef jerky" to every encrypted message.

    --
    A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    1. Re:S/MIME by Lord+Ender · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, they make a lot of sense. If you rely on blackberry encryption, you have no idea when your privacy is being invaded by the Indian government. With S/MIME, they can't even attempt to spy on you without you being aware. They won't go fishing through your correspondence. They won't data-mine you. They would need to be specifically targeting you and admitting to you that you're under investigation to even have a chance of seeing your mail.

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  9. That's Nice by Greyfox · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They could potentially do some real damage to their economy while still not being able to monitor all electronic communications in their country. Hopefully they're not putting all their security eggs in the "monitoring" basket, because people will find a way to communicate under the radar. Any terrorists that monitoring catches are probably not the ones you have to worry about.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  10. 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.

    --

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    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.

      --
      The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
  11. Too bad for Democracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    India Now Wants Access To Google and Skype

    Google and Skype should just say no. In fact, if everybody said "NO!" then India would condemn itself to being a third world country. It would also give BlackBerry an incentive to say "NO!" too, because if your competition isn't making money off of evil, then BlackBerry isn't losing any business from competition. Of course India (et al) could always just continue to steal technology, but at least that would give trading partners an incentive to retaliate.

    When the democracies start spying on there own citizens then being in a "democracy" is quite useless. Warrants, oversight and checks and balances are what made America (on paper at least) a great nation. Too bad everybody is falling for the lowest common denominator repression that used to be the primary domain of dictatorships.

  12. Re:Goodbye India by Predius · · Score: 5, Funny

    You wanted to be the greatest source of ICT Professionals in the world.

    You started low - call centres - but hoped high.

    Now you just shot yourself in the foot with a rocket launcher.

    As long as they got a good bounce they'll reach the Quad Damage and be rocking despite the minor health loss up front.

  13. Re:India = not all that democratic by Herkum01 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    our CFO's will outsource the 'mundane' coding, sure. but sensitive stuff? any smart CFO will rethink this.

    Yeah right, the executives that work their way up to CxO are the guys who would save a nickel today to get their bonuses and take a golden parachute out tomorrow when the company tanks.

  14. Re:ok... by bickerdyke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or a "National Security Letter" where you can't neither talk nor complain about?

    --
    bickerdyke
  15. 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?