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DEITY National Encryption Policy is as good as forbidding encryption

Illustration of how a file or document is sent using Public key encryption by Johannes Landin

Illustration of how a file or document is sent using Public key encryption by Johannes Landin

First of all, what is National Encryption Policy?

“Under Section 84A of Information Technology Act, 2000 Rules are to be framed to prescribe modes or methods for encryption”. So DeitY has framed a draft of such rules which will decide the future of how encrypted services are to be used or provided to users in India. The preamble in the draft clearly shows that they very well understand what encryption is meant to be used for. What they fail to understand is how it helps secure communication between two entities. The problem lies in the strategies stated in the draft. Let us break the draft into parts and try to analyze how exactly they can possibly ruin encrypted services and also how it will affect you.

I am just an engineer. I am stating my opinion on this because I think it will affect me a lot. Your comments on this are welcome and hope we can have a healthy discussion on this. This will ultimately affect you and how you use Internet services. Hence, this is a crucial matter and everyone from tech should participate in this.

[Update – September 21]

New exemptions to DeitY policy

All those who are saying that the proposed addendum exempts social media apps, messaging apps, etc., have clearly not read the addendum point 1 carefully. It states that “mass use encryption products” are exempted from the NEP. The “mass use encryption products” definitely does not include copyright crypto algorithms/proprietary encryption products owned by respective companies. So it does not clarify anything but only adds to the problems.

I am just an engineer. I am stating my opinion on this because I think it will affect me a lot. Your comments on this are welcome and hope we can have a healthy discussion on this. This will ultimately affect you and how you use Internet services. Hence, this is a crucial matter and everyone from tech should participate in this.

Originally published by Bhavyanshu Parasher here.

 

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