Indian spies ask to block Skype; Skype denies sharing code with China, US governments
A Times of India report claims Skype shared its encryption with the U.S. and Chinese governments. A Skype spokesperson denies this: "Reports that Skype has shared its code with the US, China and other governments are groundless.? The story leads with the Indian Intelligence Bureau asking the Department of Telecommunications for permission to block Skype to deter terrorists. Skype says: "Skype is aware of reports that certain Intelligence agencies in India have asked the government there to block the use of Skype. While we do not have confirmation of these reports or any directive by the authorities to block Skype, we don?t believe any country or operator should impede consumers? choice to use Skype or other Internet applications to improve their communications." Skype won’t say if Indian intelligence agencies have asked Skype for help with interception or tracking criminals, if Skype has helped them, or if Skype is talking with Indian officials about broader policy issues. The Times says agile criminals are shifting from easy to intercept to harder to intercept technologies. Authority for Indian government interception lies in the definition of telephony. At the moment phones don’t include "over the top" apps like Skype. Ability to intercept rests in domestic control over PSTN termination gateways and the theoretical ability to discover, reassemble, and decrypt Skype packets travelling within India. "The Cabinet Committee on Security has accepted the recommendation in principle but has not set a date for initiating action" says the story. There appear to be two forces at work. One is a law enforcement and intelligence community drive to forbid the ability for citizens to keep secrets. In their values, good people don’t have secrets and bad people’s secrets should be exposed so government can protect the country. This is a generalization but their advocacy to politicians is consistent with that philosophy. The other force is the telecom industry defending itself. Lobbying has a high return on investment and is more effective at protecting incumbents than changing business models or innovating aggressively. Skype, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Google’s IM/VoIM teams have more designers/engineers innovating in this space than AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. So they lobby governments to raise barriers to entry (emergency calling, for example). These two forces produce politicians in Russia lip syncing to Russian telecoms that Skype is unpatriotic, a threat to national security, a threat to the economy, a foreign intrusion. You get politicians in England, Italy, and Germany enlarging police surveillance powers proffering the critical need to bypass Skype encryption to undermine terrorists. Banning or constricting Skype adds to candidates’ "law and order", "strong leader", and "national security" credibility, and pays off their obligations to the communications industry. India is the world’s second largest mobile market (after China, ahead of the USA), according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Trai has defended VoIP from barriers to entry to India’s markets. More than 300 million Indians have phones. Customers of India’s telephone and cable ISPs use home grown internet telephony at the rate of 130 million minutes for the year ending 31 March 2009. Skype served 25,500 million Skype-to-Skype minutes in 2009Q2. Skype has no operations or personnel or portal partners in India. See also: Spooks want govt to block Skype, Mohua Chatterjee, The Times of India Indian government pondering blocking Skype, Sean P. Aune, Tech.Blorge IB asks govt to block Skype, VoIP services, Dhirendra Singh, Jai Bihar Skype: People want total control over mobile phone apps, Matthew Lasar , Ars Technica Indian Intelligence asks government to block VoIP calls, siliconindia news bureau Indian govt plans to block all Internet telephony for security purposes, Mihir Patkar, Think Digit. IB calls for block of VoIP services citing security concerns, TeleGeography tags: skype, intelligence, security, police, wiretap, intercept, encryption, decryption, india, voip, dot, ibCall me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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