Will Skype and Gmail Give Your Data to the Indian Government?

The recent Mumbai bomb blasts has the Indian government in a frenzy. Just after it gave RIM (Research in Motion) an deadline to hand over interception keys for its BlackBerry services, the government has now asked Skype and Google’s email service Gmail, to provide access to their data.

These ultimatums are serious ploys by the government, as was echoed by the words of newly sworn-in junior Telecommunications and IT Minister Sachin Pilot, who said:

There are a whole list of companies that have been asked to give [access] … [and] provide solutions, because law enforcement agencies, the home ministry and intelligence agencies want that information for national security.

The Indian government sees Gmail and Skype as examples of tools which can be used for communication, potentially, by terrorists in planning and carrying out their attacks. Other companies not yet named who could also be called upon to cooperate with the government are Yahoo, Rediff, and MSN, as well as free group-SMS services like Way2SMS, and 160by2.

RIM has already provided the Indian government with a solution to monitor its browsing and chat services, But the company has stood firm in saying it can not permit monitoring of corporate emails as they are highly-encrypted, and accessing them would be a breach of service for its enterprise clients.

Nokia’s push email service has also come onto the Indian government’s radar, and the Finnish mobile giant has been forced to set up servers in India to allow national intelligence agencies to monitor it.

What does it mean for you?

If you are a Skype or Gmail user, and fear that your private messages won’t be private anymore – sit back and relax because Skype (owned by Microsoft) and Gmail (by Google) are both based in the US where the Internet laws protect the user’s privacy on the web.

This means that the Government of India still might not be able to gain access to the protected data flowing through Skype and Gmail networks. But I’m not ruling out the possibility that the Indian Government might just force things to favor their stand by blocking Google and Skype out of the country. It is highly unlikely, I believe.