…and there it is. RIM has backed down in the face of pressure from the Indian security establishment. Now the Indian security establishment appear to have become emboldened. As a result they’re seeking out data from any source they can get their hands on.
From USA Today:
“The ministry of home affairs has made it clear that any communication through the telecom networks should be accessible to the law enforcement agencies and all telecom service providers including third parties have to comply with this,” an official told the Times of India.
“Any company with a telecoms network should be accessible,” an Indian Home Ministry official told the BBC. “It could be Google or Skype, but anyone operating in India will have to provide data.”
While I can understand their motivation for wanting access to the aforementioned data I’m curious as to where this will all stop. I was saddened to see RIM give in to demands. This has set a rather dangerous precedent on the world stage and I’m afraid that this will get far worse in the short term. Will anyone make a stand or will they just take their spankings and divulge the data?
Thank you sir, may I have another?!
What are your thoughts on this development?
(Image used under CC from Shubert Ciencia)
…and a parting shot.
(Image used under CC from 925*18)
Being a US citizen, I feel a little hypocritical criticizing India for these demands. I mean, the US does it, but the US does so up front as an understood; not 10 years down the line. But I do agree, where does this stop and what sort of controls are there to prevent a government from abusing that access? There’s still a big difference between the approaches of 2 extremes such as the US and China…I’d prefer India handle this quieter like the US, if only because their boldness will in turn embolden other smaller, less stable players.
Does drive interesting discussions into net neutrality, however. Does this threaten net neutrality, or does this actually promote individual choices of even *more* anonymity?
hi,
i’ve read your article. but i feel like you need to be in india to understand situation in india. india is facing bigger problems like terrorism using tools like this. and only reason govt wants access is because terrorist have access to it and they are using it as a medium. and govt wants make sure that they can interpret any communication between terrorist. that’s why us is doing it. i don’t know you know that or not but NSA of usa is already tracing all you conversation related to internet. all your communication in usa goes to two line one to NSA and one to central ISP line.
right now usa is not facing problems like india. in india we are facing huge problems from terrorists, if you don’t know then often they use services like gmail to send threat emails. and in one of there attacks they used skype to communicate actually with there persons out in one of our neighbour country. after all this problem indian govt has decided to track down the root of problem and any nation size of india would have done those steps. just look back at usa they have done this far early back in 2000.
@hardik Thanks for the comment but, I’m not American.