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."

Comments

Not seeing a problem with that.

[Kenja]

Frankly, I dont think the US should use gMail etc for governmental communications either.

Re:Not seeing a problem with that.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point? It's not like you can control which packets will and won't be routed through the US.
What they ought to be requiring is encryption, but we all know that's not going to happen.

Re:Not seeing a problem with that.

[ColdWetDog]

Nobody should use email for official anything.

Benjamin Franklin was right. It's the Post Office. I mean, does any email provider say they will deliver through rain, sleet, snow or hail? Do you see that on anybody's TOS? Given the uncertainties of the climate these days, you'd be a fool to do it any other way.

Besides, it will slow the government down. That's always a plus.

Re:Not seeing a problem with that.

[ZombieBraintrust]

American politicians use GMail because goverement accounts are archived and the contents are considered public property and not private communication.

Re:Not seeing a problem with that.

[Archangel Michael]

And besides, if you're doing nefarious activities, you can avoid subpenas when you appear in front of Congress ... right Lois Learner?

Re:Not seeing a problem with that.

[Ruprecht the Monkeyb]

Clearly you don't live in a large city in the U.S. where mail frequently disappears, often found months (or years) later in a dumpster or a postal workers basement. I'll take the same 99.99% delivery rate and the near-instant turnaround possible with email, thanks.

Re:Not seeing a problem with that.

[gstoddart]

American politicians use GMail because goverement accounts are archived and the contents are considered public property and not private communication.

Ironic, since the NSA considers GMail to be public property and not private communication as well.

Re:Not seeing a problem with that.

[Immerman]

I think the point is that if the source and destination endpoints are not under US control, and the communication channel between them is secure, then the NSA can watch the encrypted traffic flow through US-controlled nodes all they want without getting much information beyond mail server A transferred X bytes of data to mail server B.

Re:Not seeing a problem with that.

[thej1nx]

NICNET (http://www.nic.in) has long been used in India for government mails and official data. You literally have dedicated VSAT connections etc. to it in offices, and it is a separate network in itself.

The Indian army too for obvious reasons, just like its counterparts everywhere, maintains its own nationwide network, and does not allows internet connections to it.

All they are asking is, that officials use these network, which are NOT public, instead of allowing the data to pass over any backbone that US has control over. And thus no classified data is expected to ever hit any backbone that is in US control.

Smoke screen

[nurb432]

Its not to 'protect the data' it's to get people to use services that they have direct access too.

Every government does this.

Missing the point

[elloGov]

USA's authoritarian, Orwellian stance is hurting American companies' ability to compete in the global market, domestic and international. It hurts the American economy.

Re:Missing the point

[gstoddart]

OK, so which couintry exactly would YOU trust to host your data and no spy on it.

If you are a government, YOU are the only ones you can trust to host your data.

If you are a company, YOU are the only ones you can trust to host your data.

Having another company or country host your data was NEVER a good idea, and some of us have been saying so for some time. But all of a sudden people are realizing just how bad of an idea that was, and they're pulling back from it.

Re:Makes sense to me.... FTFY

[zlives]

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.

And the backlash cometh

[cookYourDog]

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.

Traitorous NSA

[TrumpetPower!]

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&

Re:Traitorous NSA

[LordThyGod]

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&

Exactly! Its not a done deal yet, but they are gutting a very significant industry. This is a very costly fuck up. It would be one thing if we knew the world was a *better* or safer place as a result, but I can't see how to draw that conclusion. Au contraire, they just spend a boatload of money, muddy the waters, and gut a vital industry. You can't believe anything the NSA says since being really good liars is a valued trade asset, and there is no real oversight.

Re:Traitorous NSA

[TrumpetPower!]

Whilst I certainly wouldn't disagree with you over the importance of encryption...well, put it this way: when was the last time you encrypted a letter you dropped in the mailbox?

The point is that it's about as much hassle for somebody at the post office to steam-open an envelope with nobody being none the wiser for it as it is for an ISP to snoop on people's mail.

People have historically been just fine with sending the most private of letters protected by nothing more than the seal of the envelope because the United States Postal Service has a well-deserved unimpeachable reputation for being the hardest of hard-cases about protecting the sanctity of the mail.

It's not surprising that people carried that same trust over to email; it's an almost instinctual conclusion to assume the one is every bit like the other save for the mechanisms of delivery.

And, had they done it right, Google could have earned the world's trust by self-policing with the same vigilance the USPS does.

But they blew it.

Royally, and spectacularly, they blew it.

But what remains most troubling about it is that it was an official government agency that twisted their arm, even if Google shouldn't have put up with the arm-twisting.

Cheers,

b&

Indian Central Monitoring System

[TheSync]

Of course India is setting up the Central Monitoring System (CMS) essentially India's version of PRISM:

Starting from this month, all telecommunications and Internet communications in India will be analysed by the government and its agencies. This means that everything we say or text over the phone, write, post or browse over the Internet will be centrally monitored by Indian authorities. This totalitarian type of surveillance will be incorporated in none other than the Central Monitoring System (CMS)...

...the CMS was prepared by the Telecom Enforcement, Resource and Monitoring (TREM) and the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) and is being manned by the Intelligence Bureau.... ...The Information Technology Amendment Act 2008 enables e-surveillance. The government plans to create a platform that will include all the service providers in Delhi, Haryana and Karnataka creating central and regional databases to help central and state level law enforcement agencies in interception and monitoring. Without any manual intervention from telecom service providers, CMS will equip government agencies with Direct Electronic Provisioning, filter and provide Call Data Records (CDR) analysis and data mining to identify the personal information and provide alerts of the target numbers.

The estimated cost of CMS is Rs. 4 billion. It will be connected with the Telephone Call Interception System (TCIS) which will help monitor voice calls, SMS and MMS, fax communications on landlines, CDMA, video calls, GSM and 3G networks. Agencies which will have access to the CMS include the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the Narcotics Control Bureau, and the Enforcement Directorate (ED). Last October, the NIA approached the Department of Telecom requesting for connection with the CMS to help it intercept phone calls and monitor social networking sites without the cooperation of telcos. NIA is currently monitoring eight out of 10,000 telephone lines and if connected with the CMS, NIA will also get access to e-mails and other social media platforms. Essentially, CMS will be converging all the interception lines at one location for Indian law enforcement agencies to access them.

Re:Interesting Headline

[ShanghaiBill]

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.