Slashdot Mirror
Indian Government To Ban Use of US Email Services For Official Communications
hypnosec writes "The Government of India is planning to ban the use of U.S.-based email services like Gmail for official communications. It will soon send out a formal notification to it half-million officials across the country, asking them to use official email addresses and services provided by India's National Informatics Center. The move is intended to increase the security of confidential government data and protect it from overseas surveillance."
Frankly, I dont think the US should use gMail etc for governmental communications either.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
That they can't be the ones spying. Corrupt govt hating on another corrupt govt.
And centralize for national surveillance
Its not to 'protect the data' it's to get people to use services that they have direct access too.
Every government does this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
USA's authoritarian, Orwellian stance is hurting American companies' ability to compete in the global market, domestic and international. It hurts the American economy.
This seems total sensible, after all if you let a foreign entity. on the cloud, run your email you don't really own the data and any data that you don't own is at risk. The real surprise is that it took the business world this long to realize.
Reap what you sow, Google. As an American, I can't wait until Startmail or another non-U.S. email provider provides a decent alternative. GMail's days are numbered for me.
Here we see the beginnings of real, hard evidence of just how disastrous the NSA's recent actions are to the best interests of the country.
It used to be that American IT companies were the gold standard, to the point that there almost wasn't even any pretense of competition. Google, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook -- American companies ruled the Internet.
And the NSA has turned that all to shit. Now, you'd have to be an idiot to trust any American company not to hand your data over to the NSA. And the NSA has most emphatically been demonstrated that it cannot, under any circumstances, be trusted with that data; just look at not only the overt corporate espionage, but the pervy stalking culture of the degenerates working there. Even if not for official policy directives, you can bet that some low-level flunky at the NSA will be placing insider trades based on what he reads in your executive's emails.
In other words, the NSA has utterly devastated the greatest industry the United States has ever created, and the very backbone of our economy. It's worse than if they had bombed all our ball bearing plants; infrastructure can be rebuilt, but trust? How the fuck are we supposed to rebuild that? ...and the corporate heads and legal departments wonder why they shouldn't have refused to play with the NSA and gone public at the first hint of this malfeasance, writs of classification be damned. Had Google insisted it be taken down swinging rather than play lapdog to the NSA, their brand would have been unimpeachable; rather, it is untouchable.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
The NSA has a lot fewer legal problems intercepting foreign mail than
it does domestic.
Only now, it simply means they wont have good spam filters,
and money will now be flowing out of india to nigeria $26,000,000 at a time.
Of course India is setting up the Central Monitoring System (CMS) essentially India's version of PRISM:
Actually no, GWB would only have been attacked by the Left for the most part, the Right mostly would have defended GWB for doing what was needed to protect our country. The response from the pro defense politicians is decidedly mute, they are simply choosing not to defend he President, at least not very much.
These intrusions by the NSA are a lot like things that have been going on all along (note I did not say it was good). Basically the opportunity for progress on this issue is precisely because Obama is the President, the Left is naturally suspicious of police and spying, while the Right is simply suspicious of Obama. (FYI, my favorite story about this is back when GWB was in power the Left would complain, what if someone you didnâ(TM)t like had this kind of power, and all too often the Right would reply, but I trust the people on power right nowâ¦)
What contracts? The government of India already provides email addresses to their employees. They're saying "Hey, stupid employee, use this email, don't go off making a Gmail account for official business!"
So if you want to hide something you must be guilty?
If you are a government official in a democratic country, and you are trying to hide your official activities, then yes, it is a reasonable assumption that you are corrupt. With very few exceptions, government business should be conducted in public and transparently.
Doesnt that pretty much defeat SSL? And what on earth would make you believe that they weren't compromised.
Right, using an email provider that does not cooperate with the NSA will be less secure than using a U.S. provider who follows orders like a good doggie.
Of all the inherently useless and broken protocols in use today SMTP email takes the cake.
Anyone can impersonate anyone else with impunity. Phishing and PC zombification via Email is boundless.
Anyone can send you whatever useless garbage they want without your consent.
No useful security of any kind.
Inability to transmit large content and no way to facilitate realtime communication.
Message delivery is a crapshoot thanks to hapazard proliferation of automated filters with minds of their owns.
The failure of SMTP on all levels and massive operational costs it has incurred for administrators and users is mind boggling.