How Your Cloud Dream Is Becoming a Security Nightmare

It’s not just India and Saudi Arabia making these kinds of moves either. Lebanon, Algeria, Indonesia and several other countries are said to be watching closely what’s been going on with RIM, with an eye towards pursuing similar deals with the company, and with other web and mobile service providers. There have also been unconfirmed reports that RIM has already handed over some form of monitoring ability to the federal authorities in both Russia and China, although it’s not clear what level of access those governments have received. If India goes after Google and Skype for access to its email, instant messaging or other communications, China and plenty of other countries are almost certain to demand the same kinds of access.

The government’s belief that terrorists

India has focused on targeting Skype because of the government’s belief that terrorists and other anti-government forces routinely use the VoIP service as a way of communicating without having their phones tapped — something that could also be a risk with the new voice services that Google has launched. According to reports from Bloomberg and other news sources, the government wants both Google and Skype to set up servers in that country that can be monitored by security agencies, or to provide a means for tracking voice and instant messaging data.