Ravi Shankar Prasad, the communications and IT minister of India has said that there has been no decision yet on whether or not to bring servers of social media providers like Facebook and Twitter into India. In a written reply to the Lok Sabha the minister has disclosed that despite this, the government regularly interacts with these companies in order to resolve issues regarding unlawful content on the Internet.
Services like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Viber and more have their servers located outside the country’s borders, which makes it difficult for law enforcement and security agencies to intercept them in order to access their date for security purposes. That’s because they feature several layers of encryption on them.
If these servers are brought into India, it’ll be easier for the government to cooperate with the companies and bypass the encryption, but at the moment, they need to go through a long process in order to do this. Moreover, with the decision on whether or not to ask these players to bring their servers in India not having been taken yet, it has asked service providers as well as websites like Facebook and Twitter to allow lawful interception and monitoring facilities to the security agencies.
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According to a PTI report cited by BGR India, Ravi Shankar Prasad has commented that these services may sometimes be used by anti-national and criminal elements, which is why their monitoring has become a necessity. It’s for this reason primarily that the government wants companies to establish country-specific servers in India.
While we’re yet to get closure on this matter, we’re looking forward to a final decision in the months to come. So let’s wait and watch.