Comms providers in India must stay local

MESSAGING FIRMS including Research in Motion (RIM) that want to offer their communications services in India will have to open them up to local security services, according to the government.

India's federal home secretary, G K Pillai told reporters, including one at the Wall Street Journal, that all companies that want to provide communications services in India - and yes, he was talking about Google, Skype, and RIM - will have to use local and government friendly servers.

"They (companies such as Google and Skype) have to install servers in the country," said Pillai according to the WSJ report.

India is backing up this demand with notices that will wing their way to the legal departments of targeted firms. These will demand 'lawful access' for the security door-kickers, as and whenever they see fit, fancy it, or have a grudge against someone.

India has been demanding access to RIM's Blackberry communications in recent weeks and has even asked for encryption keys as it seeks to stop militants from, um, emailing each other in secret.

Although at the end of last week the industry roundly supported proposals from RIM that would see it offer access, this does not seem to have been enough for the Indian government, which is pushing for even more complete access.

India had set a deadline of 31 August for discussions, and was expected to cut local services from that time. However it recently backed down from that deadline and will give RIM 60 days while it looks into the matter further. µ