Search giant and VoIP pioneer join RIM on the list of tech companies facing sanctions on the subcontinent. Having given RIM a 60-day reprieve from a ban on Blackberry messaging traffic, Indian authorities have now set their sights on Google and Skype. As they did with RIM, authorities in the country are demanding access to data that flows across Google’s and Skype’s servers.
BlackBerry’s owners, Canada based Research in Motion, were given time to assess the feasibility of the interception solutions they had offered. The solutions covered BlackBerry Enterprise Server as well as BlackBerry Messenger, the two services that so far cannot be intercepted by intelligence agencies, and which they fear could be misused by terrorist elements. The Home Ministry had told the Telecom Ministry that if the security concerns were not addressed, the service should be stopped immediately. The smart-phone-maker has a subscriber base of one million in India.
To ward off any insinuations that it was targeting BlackBerry services alone, the ministry has decided to widen its net and ask other firms like Skype and Google to also provide access to their instant messaging services. A new voice feature just added to Gmail is what put Google in the Indian government’s crosshairs according to some trade analysts.
“These concerns have been addressed in other parts of the world, I see no reason why the Indian government and agencies should take any risk at all as far technology is concerned,” Minister of State for Communication and IT Sachin Pilot told reporters. However, Pilot made it clear that the government was not in the business of shutting down services. “We are not in the business shutting down services,” he said. The Indian home ministry wants BlackBerry, Google and Skype to set up servers in India, a government source familiar with the matter said Monday.
This ongoing issue has resulted in BlackBerry sales drop in India as consumers turn wary. Their sales have declined in recent days as customers find it dicey to invest in Blackberry phones. RIM’s rivals Apple Inc and Nokia would be among the biggest gainers if India blocks BlackBerry services. Both firms are waiting to gain share in a market that has been mostly dependent on BlackBerry. Skype and Google Talk are both encrypted end-to-end, so intercepting communications is extremely difficult. A Google spokesman told the BBC it had not yet received any communication from the government. Although it has been reported that Google is proposing setting up a server in India as part of the solution.
Do you believe the Government is justified in making such demands?
