India's Worrying Draft Encryption Policy

knwny writes: The government of India is working on a new National Encryption Policy the contents of which have raised a few alarms.Among other things, the policy states that citizens and businesses must save all encrypted messages (including personal or unofficial ones) and their plaintext copies for 90 days and make them available to law enforcement agencies as and when demanded. The policy also specifies that only the government of India shall define the algorithms and key sizes for encryption in India. The policy is posted on this website.

Comments

Re:India needs a policy on bathing

[CRCulver]

Until you require your citizens to bathe at least once a week

Look, I would be the first person to criticize Indian standards of hygiene and make one of those "Fix your problems X before doing Y, India" posts: after traveling around India for half a year, and just before I was supposed to fly out, I ended up spending nearly a month in a Delhi hospital after either drinking bad water or eating food that wasn't prepared in a sanitary fashion. The country has a big problem with ensuring treated water, disposing of sewage, and washing hands well when serving food.

But where foreigners have no right to criticize Indians is bathing. Indians bathe regularly, and I've been impressed to see even the poorest of the poor using any public source of water they could to thoroughly scrub every morning. Indians know how much sweat and odor a tropical or sub-tropical climate could produce. It is often Westerners who are considered the unwashed there.

Re:You certainly know the content of this message

[PPH]

Steganography in cow pictures?