India's CERT given exemption from Right To Information requests

India's government has granted its Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT-In, immunity from Right To Information (RTI) requests – the nation's equivalent of the freedom of information queries in the US, UK, or Australia. Reasons for the exemption have not been explained, but The Register has reported on one case in which an …

[ChoHag]

"We will do government honestly and transparently so everyone can see what we're doing! Except when we screw up."

[Sitaram Chamarty]

Hardly surprising.

Anyone who's followed the evolution of India's so-called digital privacy legislation will have realised that, from the first version in 2018 to what it looks like today, every revision (approx once/year) has progressively distanced the government itself from any of its provisions.

For people like me, who believe any government is always a bigger threat than any google/microsoft/whatever (if only because you can't choose to walk away from the former like you can the latter), this basically makes the whole thing moot.

I expect FOI to go the same way, adding more and more exceptions every once in a while till it too becomes as meaningless.

[DS999]

Six hours??

Sometimes you don't even know if it is a security incident or something else six hours after you detect a problem!

If they hold businesses to that they are going to get a lot of false alarms, where they get a report followed up later by a "never mind!"

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Six hours??

Everyone with an ounce of sense knows India's reporting regime has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with control. This latest move just confirms it. The 6-hour reporting deadline will be a stick they use to harass IT organizations the government doesn't like.