‘Google, Skype cannot be asked to toe Indian line on security'

The Department of Telecom has told the Ministry of Home Affairs that there is no law under which it can mandate international service providers such as Google and Skype to allow snooping by Indian security agencies.

The DoT has suggested that the Government should raise this issue at global forums including the World Trade Organisation and the International Telecommunication Union.

According to an internal Government note, this was conveyed by senior DoT officials at a recent meeting attended by top officials of the Home Ministry, the Intelligence Bureau and the Department of Information Technology. Before launching any service, international service providers have to take permission from member countries of global forums such as the UN, WTO and ITU.

Therefore, DoT has suggested that the issue of lawful interception should be taken up at these forums.

The Home Ministry has been asking DoT to force foreign service providers to comply with Indian security requirements.

According to rules governing telecom services, all licensed operators are required to ensure that law enforcement agencies intercept all traffic, both voice and data, flowing through their network at any given time. However, service providers such as Google and Skype do not operate under Indian licences, hence, cannot be mandated to follow the rule concerning security.

DoT seeks FBI's help

Meanwhile, DoT is taking the help of US authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Communications Commission, to figure out how to deal with highly encrypted services.

At a recently held meeting attended by officials from FBI and the US National Security Staff, DoT sought details on how the US was intercepting traffic.

The basic issue is that Indian security agencies do not have the technology to snoop into highly encrypted services. Therefore, the onus of providing interception facility has been put on operators and vendors.

Talks deadlocked

Over the past few years, security agencies and service providers have reached a deadlock on providing interception to a number of services including BlackBerry Enterprise Services, video calling on 3G platform and Virtual Private Networks. While operators say that they cannot offer interception technically, security agencies are insisting that snooping is enabled anyhow.

DoT has now told the Home Ministry that the onus of interception lies with security agencies who should ramp up their capabilities. DoT has suggested that asking service providers and vendors to provide snooping facility was not the right thing to do and, therefore, either the Home Ministry could ban services that they could not access or live with it.

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