Gmail, Yahoo! Will Be Asked To Route Mails Via Indian Servers...

After pacifying the country with statements about not censoring social networking content, the government has decided to divert its attention to email communication instead. Reports suggest that Department of Information Technology (DIT) will now ask email service providers such as Yahoo! and Gmail, along with others to route all emails accessed in India through servers based in the country, even if the said mail account is registered outside. The move comes after security agencies failed to get real-time access to some emails, because the accounts had been registered outside India.

In a high-level meeting held at the Union Home Secretary RK Singh's office, the Director General from CERT-in, India's cyber community noted that Yahoo! automatically relocates all email accounts registered in the country to its servers in India. However, this does not apply for emails from accounts registered outside the country. Earlier, security agencies were unable to access email accounts of suspected terrorists belonging to the terrorist outfit Indian Mujahideen during investigations, because they had been registered in a European country. When the required permissions to view these mails in question were asked, the content provider said that a request would have to be made with the European nation where the server was situated.

While censoring tweets and status updates is absurd, this does seem like something that the defence requires, taking into account the gravity of the security situation. On the flip side though, how comfortable would you be, knowing that the government goes through all your email communication?