Friday, November 8, 2013

G-Mail Is Violating Indian Cyber Law And May Be Banned In India

Indian government has ignored the importance of regulating the e-mail environment for long. Now it is facing a situation where the e-mail service providers located in foreign jurisdictions are taking Indian laws for granted. Some of these e-mail service providers are actually abetting and encouraging commission of cyber crimes and cyber contraventions as prescribed by the Information Technology Act, 2000 that is the cyber law of India.

Indian government is taking Google lightly and Google is continuously violating various laws of India. Now leading techno legal experts of India have recommended that G-mail must be banned in India as it is abetting and encouraging commission of various cyber crimes and cyber contraventions in India.

The Delhi High Court has recently directed the Central Government to frame the e-mail policy of India as soon as possible. While the Central Government would come up with the e-mail policy very soon yet the State of Maharashtra has already issued an advisory that has mandated that e-mail service of G-mail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc would no longer be used in government departments of Maharashtra.

Of all e-mail service providers the services provided by G-mail are most noxious and violative of Indian laws. G-mail not only hides the Internet protocol address of the originator of the communication but substitute its own IP address with that of the originator. Thus, no person can ascertain the IP address of a cyber criminal unless Google discloses the same and getting information from Google is next to impossible for the ordinary individual.

It is surprising why this fact has not been investigated by Indian government so far. This practice of G-mail is clearly violating many provisions of the IT Act, 2000 and till now Indian government has not prosecuted Google/G-mail in this regard. It would be a good idea if the proposed e-mail policy of India deals with this issue in length and make suitable provisions regarding misuse of e-mail facilities provided by G-mail as well.