Yesterday, even as the average Mumbaikar was on his way home, three explosions ripped through the financial hub. Although its famed resilience came to its rescue, the importance of government security agencies getting access to the services of Google.com and Skype, was reinforced. The request for the same was forwarded a while back; the sequence of events yesterday only strengthening the reason.
Time to share the information to prevent it reaching the wrong people
The information and other details on sites such as Google and Skype are encrypted in nature and hence their interception becomes impossible. Terrorist outfits and other miscreants have been taking advantage of this very situation, and have been smoothly carrying out operations. Readers would remember that the services of popular handset manufacturer, Canada-based Research in Motion’s (RIM) services were under the scanner for the same reasons, a while back. The government on strong insistence managed to get the intercepted communication records from the messenger service of BlackBerry. However, due to the unavailability of any technology to intercept corporate emails, the access to the same has been non-existent. According to a statement lent by Sachin Pilot, MoS for Communications and IT stated that in addition to Google, Skype, BlackBerry, popular services like Facebook, too have been sent notices for the same. According to PCworld.com though, Google is saying that they haven't yet received any offcial request to share data with the government and Skype is yet to comment on the same.
However, these steps for security will come at the cost of the loss of private space for the consumers, who will have all their data open to the government's security officials. It now remains to be seen if Google and Microsoft-owned Skype consent to having their networks intercepted. The success and the efficient use of the same should aid the nation in its war against terrorism.
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