Email services to be routed through servers in India
22 Feb 2012
India is asking email service providers Yahoo, Gmail and other internet content providers to route all emails accessed in India through the country even if the mail account is registered outside the country.
The move comes after the Indian government compelled BlackBerry maker Research In Motion to set up severs in Mumbai to provide a mechanism for lawful interception of its messenger services.
Press Trust of India yesterday reported that in a recently held high-level meeting in the office of Union Home Secretary R K Singh, the department of technology (DIT) has been asked to inform all email service and other internet content providers that India wants all the email sent and received by Indians to be routed through servers physically located in India even if the email account was created outside India.
This is being done so that the security agencies will have direct, real-time access to all the email communications in India.
The director general of Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) said that emails accounts of Indian registered users of Yahoo are automatically directed to its server in India, but Yahoo accounts registered outside India and accessed from India are routed through servers outside India.
The government decision came after its security agencies failed to gain access to the suspected email accounts operated by terrorist of Indian Mujahideen since it had been opened in a European country, and were told that a request needed to be sent to a European nation where the server was based.
India has put the onus on service providers for providing access to security agencies to monitor information on smart phones, and likewise will put the responsibility on email service providers to give access to all emails.
