Wakey wakey - DRAFT NATIONAL ENCRYPTION POLICY

Wakey wakey people! Seems like the Gov. of India is on a roll to eliminate privacy from our lives once and for all. Im not a political person , but its worth taking note that the same party which opposed AADHAR in the first place flipped as soon as it was elected. First AADHAR , then the whole net neutrality issue and in its most recent debacle , the Gov. of India is trying to eliminate the very purpose of using encryption in our day to day digital lives with the “Draft National Encryption Policy”.

In short , the Draft National Encryption Policy will make it mandatory for every citizen of India to store all encrypted communication for at least 90 days and make it available to security agencies, if required, in text form .

From whatsapp messages to your emails , you will be required to store 90 days worth of data.

It also wants everyone to hand over their encryption keys to the Government.

This policy is astoundingly draconian in nature.
You can download the entire draft here : http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/draft%20Encryption%20Policyv1.pdf

A simple version of this has been posted by medianama.com founder Nikhil Pahwa here :
http://www.medianama.com/2015/09/223-india-
draft-encryption-policy/

If you are on twitter , you can follow Nikhil Pahwa here : https://twitter.com/nixxin
He is usually at the forefront of such issues and always up to date with the latest news.

The draft policy, for which the DeitY has invited comments from the public till October 16, has suggested that “all vendors of encryption products shall register their products with the designated agency of the Government”. The final policy will be drafted only after the feedback is taken into account.

You may send your comments to akrishnan@deity.gov.in

This issue, as most of us may know , is much more important than the whole net neutrality issue.
Unfortunately, it is difficult for the general public to grasp the importance of encryption and how it could affect our day to day lives.

And this is where I hope we , Indian Pirates ,step in.

The aim of this post would be to spread awareness by any means possible. Maybe make a video or just try and make up a post which explains in layman’s terms the gravity of the issue – preferably with a bit of humor in it as the general public simply does not want to see or read something which sounds serious (the aim is to get the general public up on their toes, interested and actually start giving a damn about the issue).

Lets try and get as many people onboard as possible- someone who writes well , or any of your friends who could make a video.

Im sure we will have no problems on the technical front in understanding the policy as we have a lot of techies here on Indian pirates.

So lets:
• Agree on what the draft encryption policy actually means for us.
• Bring up a few core points to work with.
• Finally , try and create a short video or a post so we can educate the general public.

Any other suggestions are welcome.

We need to do this now and try and do it as quickly as possible as the last date to submit our comments is October 16.

Okayy , your turn to type something now ;)