SSB Awareness Series: Law of Encryption - Part 2

In Part 1 of this series we saw what does the technology and law means and how it could impact the population. Lets move ahead and see the impact and why is this new government creating such policies.

Impact and Issues with the Encryption policy:

Though, the Encryption policy has been introduced for a noble cause for securing the people of the country but the policy can become a headache for people’s lives. Moreover, the policy of not deleting the messages for 90 days will mean that every mobile user will mean that the user needs to keep a check on his messages every day. 

Moreover, phones like I-phone have been found to encrypt data within themselves so they might have to keep the data in a different drive as per needs of this law. Also, what about the users who have low space  in their mobile. Will they be prosecuted just on the basis of the fact that they cannot reproduce the data for 90 days as they are having a cheap mobile phone.  Also, snooping in such a way will give unnecessary power to police and other security forces as they can now make anyone a suspect and ask him to reproduce things about his personal life. Moreover, people talk anything on these applications, which the police might use as a tool to morally police the citizens. Hence, there is a huge danger to the freedom of expression and the law seems to be draconian.  

Click here to read: SSB Awareness Series: Law of Encryption - Part 1
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Also, since encryption is done by every site which sends information over the internet i.e. the e-commerce sites and the banking sites, they need to sign an agreement with the Indian government so as to provide out information as and when demanded.

Also, another point of the draft which says that the service providers need to provide their encryption keys to government, which as easy and all time access to the servers of these service providers. This move will lead to service providers nagging away from India and in this era of information India might be lead behind. And the ultimate goal of Prime Minister Modi to attract foreign investors and ‘Make in India’ might just be a dream. Moreover, the announcement came just a day before when Narendra Modi was about to make his way to the Silicon Valley in U.S.A to persuade them to invest in India.

Conclusion:

The Law at first seems to be something which is draconian in nature. It will not only allow government agencies to intervene in our personal life but also be a big problem for people not having expensive phones. Also, it not projecting a positive image of India in the world as an investment friendly market but will project India as an insecure state.

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Also read: Role of electronics in Defense forces

Though government has taken back the draft which was produced for the Encryption policy but the government needs to address these problems in a different way. Instead of asking the people and the service providers to give them the data the government should empower the country technologically so that the information must not be demanded form other sources. Instead the servers for these applications lie within our country so that information can be retrieved easily. Hence, the government should give a serious thought over its policy making and should make it keeping in mind the interest of the people.

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About the Author:  Pranav Nikam is an Electrical and Electronics engineer who is working in a renowned MNC in Chennai. He likes to work out in gym, do photography and play badminton. Through his articles he wants to spread awareness among other defence aspirants.