NEW DELHI: A government panel set up to examine security threats regarding 15 forms of communications, including Google's Gmail, Research in Motion's BlackBerry services, Nokia's email offerings and Microsoft Skype amongst others, that cannot be tracked by law enforcement agencies here, has recommended that no service be banned purely on the grounds that it cannot be monitored.
It has recommended that in the short term, India should force operators who offer such services to either locate servers in the country or share encryption keys with security agencies and assist security agencies here in monitoring these services.
As a long-term solution, the committee has recommended that the upcoming Central Monitoring System (CMS) be made capable of intercepting any form of communication service offered within the country.
It has also endorsed the telecom ministry's stance that the ultimate solution should involve intelligence agencies building up capabilities indigenously to monitor and intercept these technologies. The panel has also added that security agencies must avail the help of companies such as Infosys, TCS, Wipro and Tech Mahindra to build such capabilities.
The committee has said that security agencies must first check whether monitoring solutions are available in other counties before threatening to ban any specific communication service.
"Before banning or blocking of encrypted communication impact on business and industry, e-Commerce, e-governance, e-medicine, e-health, passport services etc should be taken into consideration. Further, banning or blocking services without providing an alternative may have international reactions and could affect other Indian industries such as BPO and IT outsourcing," the panel's report adds.
The government panel, with members from different ministries, including telecoms and IT, has also recommended that India raise its encryption levels from the present 40 bits to 256 bits, which is the standard in Europe and the US.