Encryption policy poorly worded by officer, says Ravi Shankar Prasad

After initiating the draft encryption proposal and the quick turnaround by the government, the blame now rests with a junior official who was part of the Department of Information and Technology (Dei-TY) panel. According to a report in the Economic Times , the junior official poorly worded the document and didn’t seek advice from higher-ups before making the document public. The report quotes Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, “I read the draft. I understand that the manner in which it is written can lead to misconceptions. I have asked for the draft policy to be withdrawn and reworded.” Prasad added that the word ‘users’ in the draft policy, caused all the confusion and has been taken to task for it. According to Prasad, the intended use of the phrase was supposed to be ‘creators of encryption’ instead of ‘users of encryption’ and resulted in confusion. Given that the controversy occurred around the US visit of PM Narendra Modi, an official admitted that the timing was bad and would raise unpleasant questions during the high profile visit. It is expected that the reworking of the draft encryption policy would take around three weeks. On Monday, the government released a draft encryption policy aimed at keeping a tab on the use of technology by specifying algorithms and length of encryption keys used by ‘all’. It wanted businesses, telcos and Internet companies to store all encrypted data for 90 days in plain text which should be presented before the law enforcement agencies whenever asked to. Moreover, failing to do so would mean legal action as per the laws of the country. However, on Tuesday the government had to recall the draft after protests online across social media with some terming it draconian in nature.