Ministers risk info leak with unofficial mail IDs

Central ministers and bureaucrats are risking information leaks and compromising security by using their private email accounts for official work.

Interestingly, a majority of those who ignore their official mail IDs are ministers and officials from the telecom and IT ministry who are meant to enforce the use of official IDs so that information is not hacked.

The published addresses of key people in the ministry of telecommunications and IT do not work at all or mails sent to these accounts bounce. Many of these officials have even published their "official IDs" along with their Gmail, RediffMail, Hotmail or Yahoo! accounts on the government site itself.

Telecom and IT minister Kapil Sibal himself has four IDs listed, including kapilsibal@ hotmail.com, on his official Website, of which three (mocit@ nic. in; ksibal@ sansad. nic. in and ksibal@ nic. in) do not work.

A large section of key people at the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) also have Gmail and other IDs. Senior Trai official Sunil Kumar Gupta does most of his work through guptask61@ gmail.com instead of skgupta@ trai.gov.in or advcn@ trai.gov.in.

Also, mails sent to finance minister Pranab Mukherjee's official email ID pkm@ sansad. nic.in bounce back.

The problem has assumed such proportions that the Intelligence Bureau (IB) issued security guidelines for Internet usage to all ministries and government departments in March out of fear that the use of Gmail, Hotmail or other such accounts for internal communication can expose them to interception by networks with servers outside India.

The director general of National Informatics Centre BK Gairola confirmed that IB had issued security guidelines following Wikileaks revelations of controversial and sensitive matters concerning India's diplomatic, political and other developments.

"It is true that many ministers and bureaucrats do not use their official IDs. It is a violation and there is a lack of awareness among them. We need to have a proper system in place," Gairola said, while expressing helplessness in implementing this.

"Very often you hear them say that they cannot take emails with larger attachments, or that their email inboxes are too full or that it is down completely. This in itself puts all Indians to shame," says Ajoy Eric Lal, a technocrat.

" Isn't it a shame that India's senior-most officials rely on American providers for their official and published email IDs rather than on the government's in-house IT department at NIC?" asks Lal.

Randhir Verma, a Chandigarh based telecom activist, said, "Are they not comfortable to go on record by using their official mail IDs. Have they something else in their mind. This clearly goes to show how easy it is for key people to share government data with third parties and nobody at the IT department (NIC) even gets a whiff of it. Instead, stringent measures should be taken to ensure that departments work on network that have servers in India unlike that of Yahoo, Gamil, Hotmail, rediffmail and others."

The situation is all the more unfortunate as the government has invested more than Rs 600 crore for modernising NIC to ensure effective communication between departments and to have a system that cannot be hacked.

However, the chief IT advisor to Prime Minister Sam Pitroda was not available for comment as he is out of country for more than a month.

Courtesy: Mail Today