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              | Date: 2000-01-30 
 
 ENFOPOL scharf, mit Curry-.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.-
 
 q/depesche  00.1.30/3
 
 ENFOPOL scharf mit Curry
 
 Überall auf der Welt bietet sich dasselbe Bild. Was von
 gesetzlich ermächtigten Behörden in den ILETS [International
 Law Enforcement Telecom Seminars] an
 Überwachungsmassnahmen [in EU vordem ENFOPOL
 genannt] ausbaldowert wurde, findet in seinen Weg in
 nationale Legislativen. Die indische Regierung hat ihre
 Überwachungs/pläne ganz besonders scharf angerichtet.
 
 
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 relayed by Kai Raven via debate@fitug.de
 http://home.kamp.net/home/kai.raven/index.html
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 The BJP government wants to introduce an Indian Information
 Technology Act. That, in itself, is not a bad thing. It is, in
 fact, a good idea, as IT today is administered by an
 increasingly ragged-looking patchwork of outdated and
 inadequate laws. However, they just couldn't resist the
 opportunity to try and make things easier for them to surveil
 the citizenry, preferably without said citizenry's knowledge.
 
 The draft bill which has been prepared by the Department of
 Electronics (DoE) has been sent to the Law Ministry for
 clearance. It will then be sent to the Cabinet for approval and
 ratification.
 
 Some of the alarming proposals in this bill are:
 
 Any Internet Service Provider will have to make arrangements
 to monitor all traffic passing through its servers, and make
 such traffic available to "properly constituted authorities" for
 "valid reasons of security". This would include agencies such
 as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Intelligence
 Bureau (IB) and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).
 And they aren't sparing encrypted traffic, either. On demand,
 you will be expected to decode messages you have sent, in
 effect handing over your private key.
 
 The purported reason ? "National Security".
 
 As usual.
 
 The proposed bill also contains some confusing references to
 "distant signatures" which it says will help e-commerce, but I
 wish to focus on the damage which the tapping provision will
 cause.
 
 As the British net.activist Danny O'Brien said in response to
 similar legislation in the UK, these are the reasons why this
 is a very bad thing.
 
 It's bad for e-commerce.
 
 It will add billions to the cost of doing business online, and
 take months - even years - to implement.
 
 People won't trust a system which gives a government-
 appointed stranger a back-door key to their e-mail.
 
 Overseas consumers and businesses won't want to trade
 with us. They won't want to give away the keys to their data,
 either.
 
 It'll impact the IT industry by driving business overseas.
 
 There is near-zero enthusiasm for the government's proposals
 amongst big business. Anywhere.
 
 It won't catch a single criminal.
 
 Criminals won't use the government's system. It's trivially
 easy to bypass the proposed controls if you're planning on
 breaking the law. For example, all it takes is one entry in
 your email program to use a different server to send out your
 mail, thus redering the whole issue moot.
 
 Also, there exist techniques like steganography that hide
 encrypted data in such a way as to escape detection.
 
 Despite this, we've yet to hear of one example of an
 investigation which has been hampered by an inability to
 break encrypted codes. National security or otherwise.
 
 In fact, as Fred Baker, Chair of the Internet Engineering Task
 Force (IETF) said in a recent announcement,
 
 ..strong cryptography is essential to the security of the
 Internet; restrictions on its use or availability will leave us with
 a weak, vulnerable network, endanger the privacy of users
 and businesses, and slow the growth of electronic commerce.
 
 There is still time. If government sees that there is uproar
 over this, they will push it underground for a while. It won't go
 away, but it will buy time.
 
 An example of the kind of uproar I'm talking about is the
 spontaneous anger that erupted on various mailing lists when
 this news got out. I have collected some of the most
 technically and logically sound arguments here.
 
 some URLs for more information:
 
 
 Die Bill
 http://www.mit.gov.in/it-bill.htm
 
 http://www.tbtf.com/archive/1998-12-15.html#s01
 
 http://members.tripod.com/~india_gii/
 
 http://www.stand.org.uk/
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 edited by
 published on: 2000-01-30
 comments to office@quintessenz.at
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