Yeah, right
This from one of the countries that wanted local BlackBerry servers so that they could (supposedly) spy on people using BBM.
The government of India is reportedly planning to bar its employees from using Gmail and other foreign-based email services, amid concerns over surveillance by US spy agencies. "Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside," J Satyanarayana, India's secretary of electronics and …
Quite. From a national security point of view, and an audit point of view it is mind-bogglingly dumb, and something that almost defies sense. At least for el Reg readers who understand a bit about Gmail, Office365, etc, policies.
But here in the west a lot of organisations use either Gmail or Office365 as their provider, and the likes of BT outsourced to Yahoo. Us tech folk pointed out a whole host of issues, and upper management ignored them for reasons of cost and convenience (actually the "convenience" aspect is often about internal IT policy & cast as well).
And that is without having to deal with the crushing bureaucracy in India. That should not be dismissed as a racist or xenophobic comment by the way, as my Indian friends and business contacts would tell you the same :(
I sent a friend an encrypted zip file, we both use Gmail. (not for much longer btw)
Later on I went to delete it and it had vanished. I checked "Sent" and "Bin" but it was not to be seen.
I had only ever sent this person a few mails so it should have been easy to find.
<plays theme from The Twilight Zone>
Outlook was bad for that. We had to change the .zip to ,zi1 or whatever. Anything other than .zip. With instructions in the E-mail on what to change it back to. There were a few other extensions that were problems too, like .exe, that were gotten around the same way. What a joke.
build a local, in-country server farm for India, but stipulate in the service contract and bids that there be no back doors and no "calling home"? They could buy the hardware and install local google email servers and knowledge stores designed to show laws, public policy, government minutes, initiatives, progress reports, and also, also, corruption, complaint, suggestion, and recommendation for public merit awarding submission forms. Why must it be a given that western server companies holdm the data or illicit copies outside of the contract-issuer's country?
Also, apply to the foreign, in-country contractor the antisurveillance and mass espionage laws to make them subject to extradiction if they are found exporting govenment fles of the population, credit card and medical, crime and education, and other data. State it right up front, and make them sign in blood.