RIM In Trouble For Not Violating Privacy

sufijazz writes "The US government is not alone in wanting to snoop on everything citizens do over email/phone. The Indian government wants that right too. RIM is stating they have no means to decrypt, no master key, and no back door to allow the government to access email." The article notes that 114,000 BlackBerries are in use on the Indian subcontinent. The government is concerned about attacks by militants and sees the BlackBerry as a security risk.

Comments

can't work even if they wanted it to

[gmack]

And there's the downside of governments trying to fight modern technology.

I bet if Blackberry did as they asked then people would start loading custom firmware on their phones to work around it.

Re:can't work even if they wanted it to

[Ren Hoak]

The BlackBerry has really lost its monopoly on the messaging device. If they were forced to comply with this, I would expect them to lose market share while people flocked to any of the myriad other devices that provide convenient messaging services.

Re:can't work even if they wanted it to

[unlametheweak]

It doesn't matter; allowing governments to spy on people does not stop terrorism, social injustice, crime, political unrest, famine or war. It's an irrational reaction to a problem. Deal with the cause not the effect. But I don't really think politicians are that stupid; I think they know this, but want the excuse to be in the best example of Orwellian arguments to tyranny, however subtly and slowly it creeps upon us.

Re:can't work even if they wanted it to

[Anonymous Coward]

The BlackBerry has really lost its monopoly on the messaging device.

Blackberry never had a monopoly on the messaging device.

What Blackberry does have is the best mobile messaging platform, by far. Great management tools, great encryption, great integration with existing IT infrastructure.

Re:can't work even if they wanted it to

[smclean]

Or just use encryption. To me, that's what is so baffling about the government privacy crackdowns. If anyone who was even remotely well informed wanted to communicate in private, they'd use strong encryption. I guess once someone uses encryption, they get an Indian military intelligence unit parked outside their door.

Re:can't work even if they wanted it to

[metlin]

Well, to play the devil's advocate, terrorism in India is a much more realistic threat than terrorism in the US is (a democracy surrounded by Pakistan, an Islamic dictatorship and China, an aggressive communist state).

Not that that gives the government the right to do what they are trying to do, but just that do not attribute to malice what can be attributed to idiocy, or desperation.

Just last week, there were several bomb blasts that killed over 80 people and injured hundreds more.

I don't necessarily think they are trying to fight modern technology, as much as try to prevent the bad guys from using it to their benefit. I do not necessarily agree with the way they are going about it, but I can certainly see where they are coming from.

Unlike the US where the state seems to use one incident as the bugaboo for massive invasion of privacy, countries like India and Israel face terrorism on a daily basis, and for them, this is a real, hard problem that needs to be addressed.

This is also a debate that has been going on for a long time, and it is too early to make a call.

Re:can't work even if they wanted it to

[sm62704]

do not attribute to malice what can be attributed to idiocy, or desperation

I believe Hanlon's razor is dull and rusty and Hanlon was probably using his razor to shave his own malice. Not that I ever heard off Hanlon before looking the quote up.

I subscribe to the credo "Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice". Call it mcgrew's razor if you wish, it cuts the opposite way as Hanlon's. Malice itself is usually stupid, and anger is almost always counterproductive in our world.

But it matters little whether the person you are making excuses for is stupid or evil, the result is the same, and the cure is often the same as well. Why do you think they say "wow, that smarts" when they are in pain?

Re:can't work even if they wanted it to

[Tikkun]

You can't fight murder by banning knives, you can't fight hate by burning books and you can't fight conspiracy by banning privacy. Giving up your rights does not make you in any way safer.

Deal with the problem, not with the tools.

Re:can't work even if they wanted it to

[BoberFett]

Does terrorism need to be solved? Of all the causes of death in the world, terrorism is pretty low on the totem pole. And when you look at the cost of fighting different causes of death, terrorism is way overblown.

How many people have died in the US due to terrorism compared to what we've spent on it?

How many people have died due to heart disease and cancer compared to what we've spent on them?

People's fears of scary muslims behind every corner are the stuff of Saturday morning cartoons.

End to End Encryption - independent of location

[Gat0r30y]

So.... the Indian government wants RIM to figure out a way to decrypt every email - from all those CrackBerries, without any keys (RIM doesn't have the keys) and store them all on a local server - and somehow RIM is also supposed to magically know that the hardware is in India (they operate independent of location). India, I have bad news. It isn't going to happen. On the upside, this may set a precedent for other companies to reject a governments calls for access to emails without warrants (US companies, take note, you could learn from your neighbor to the north).

Summary is indicative of the problem

[hassanchop]

The Indian government wants that right too

This shit infuriates me.

GOVERNMENTS DO NOT HAVE RIGHTS OF ANY KIND.

Governments have powers. This IS NOT a simple semantic argument.

Wait a second...

[AutopsyReport]

The US government is not alone in wanting to snoop on everything citizens do over email/phone.

Hold on a second there.

I believe the reason the US government uses the BlackBerry is because the service cannot be decrypted. If it could be, then they wouldn't be able to rely on it due to security and privacy considerations, etc.

As much as that statement is kindle for a fire I'm quite certain that at least in the context of using BlackBerry's, the US government has no interest on being able to decrypt communications. I think it's safe to assume the government is content with the fact that there is no backdoor to RIM's services.

Re:Security Risk?

[spikexyz]

The pen has always been a risk. The american (canadian) dream is financial and not ethical or intellectual. People writing dangerous ideas have always been a threat and doing so has been tolerated as far as it doesn't pose and significant threat to making money. The difference now is that the government can now eavesdrop on the pen and they want to do so to better ensure that there aren't too many dangerous ideas.