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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.
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.
Phone companies in the US, maybe elsewhere, are legally required to facilitate eavesdropping under CALEA. End to end encrypted data services such as Skype and Hushmail have escaped this so far.
Will they be faced with the dilemma of changing their architecture versus being banned? Will they lose confidence no matter what? Hushmail at least used to publish their source code, but Skype is closed source and the binary is heavily obfuscated.
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).
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Come on, folks. This guy has a "Man Sized" safe in his office. What do you think he has in there? He has a man....to feed off of.
This shit infuriates me.
GOVERNMENTS DO NOT HAVE RIGHTS OF ANY KIND.
Governments have powers. This IS NOT a simple semantic argument.
... and is protected from disclosure.
So, what happens when trade secrets leak because some gov employee got bribed to access them and pass them to a competitor?... I would assume RIM could also be held liable for loss. And its harder to sue (and win) against a government, esp. somewhere like India. A lot easier to drag RIM in front of a jury in the US.
-- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
If you had the means to break into emails and give the key to the government....
Think of this... If you are a government, wouldn't you like RIM to announce that their encryption is unbreakable, and then you announce how unhappy you are with them? I mean, wouldn't RIM be shooting itself in the foot to announce "Oh yes, there's a master key, and if we'll give it up under certain circumstances that we won't discuss"?
And what a great advertisement to have the government say "Even we can't snoop on your email". If you spent a billion dollars on advertising, you couldn't get that kind of great publicity.
It all seems to.... "convenient".
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
"they're worried about Muslim terrorists"
You mean like Rachel Ray?
If the Blackberry is a security risk, so is a pen.
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.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
If you make it so you can monitor the militants with that device... They won't use that device they will just use an other method. There is the concept that encryption technology is so advanced only the best and brightest can take advantage of it. It is easier to use something else the someome made however. It is not that difficult to make your own, espectially if you have a cause.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Other than killing other country's prime ministers (or pm candidates).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajiv_Gandhi_assassination
Religion: a large, popular cult
You mean like Rachel Ray? Exactly. But in her case, I'd demand that the test be she eat a popsicle, slowly. I'm not sure what this would prove but it would be fun to watch.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Sure, that's what they say to the public...
I know you're joking, but the Blackberry platform has been audited from end-to-end by the governments of Canada, United Kingdom, Austria, Australia, New Zealand, United States, Norway and Turkey. Also approved by NATO and the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology in Germany.
There may be back doors, but that is a pretty wide spectrum of institutions.
And frankly, you really don't need a back door. The blackberry is a secure conduit between a handheld device and an email server. So what if you can't crack it in transit. Just go to the email server, and seize that. Or throw the guy with the handheld in jail until he answers your questions.
Blackberry privacy is only for large enterprises. If you have a corporate Blackberry server, the keys are between the client units and the server, and RIM doesn't have them. If you use Blackberry's public servers, RIM has your E-mail. India only wants "non-corporate emails".
... and is protected from disclosure.
So, what happens when trade secrets leak because some gov employee got bribed to access them and pass them to a competitor?... I would assume RIM could also be held liable for loss. And its harder to sue (and win) against a government, esp. somewhere like India. A lot easier to drag RIM in front of a jury in the US.
How's this any different to a US government employee being bribed to arrange a tap on a business phoneline and passing details of any conversation to an outside party?No, he's not a vampire, he's a Cyborg. For that matter so am I. Neither garlic nor stakes will suffice. In fact, a steak through the heart is the likely cause of Cheney's becoming a cyborg in the first place!
You will be assimilated. Resistance is not only futile, when the time comes you will beg to join us.
Disclaimer: By "us" I mean cyborg, not Republican. I didn't vote for that particular cyborg and never would; I consider him and Bush to be traitors to my country. See what happens when you elect an alcoholic to the Presidency and Vice Presidency?
-mcgrew
PS- did I tell you that you would be assimilated? In fact you may already be a winner!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I know nothing about that book but it was hardly banned by Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/America_Deceived
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
If the Indian government wants to be able to spy on their own Blackberries, then run their own BES cluster. That way they have the data - problem solved.
Of course, knowing how hard it seems for RIM to let the gummint look at data, I may not give up my BB after all.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Hillary Clinton is the Whore of Babylon
Are you sure it wasn't Bill?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I suppose you have little knowledge about India. Perhaps the situation is not as bad as some other countries but the indian police and indian jails are scary enough to begin with. If you tell an indian that the police tortured someone or that some guy in prison got thrashed pretty nasty, I doubt s/he will be surprised. At least I won't. The situation is even worse if you don't live in a big city where situation is perhaps better. I come from a small village/town and you have to bribe the police even to file a report and even then they are pretty nasty to you. And it is pretty common that if a policeman stops someone who doesn't appear to have a "good background", a slap precedes any question.
Perhaps if one is suave enough to be using PGP or "rich" enough to have a blackberry things are different but for most people *any* involvement with law-enforecement agencies is bad news already. Gitmo is perhaps tame. Of course that doesn't make gitmo right, but a statement like "they need their own gitmo" is humorous in a dark sort of way.
M: "Akeehm, what pretty flowers you have."
A: "Thank you Mohammed. I should water them."
M: "For best results, wait until after the 15th of May."
What does this hypothetical conversation mean? Heck if I know, nor does anyone else. Simple coded language will defeat the global governments and their growing desire to snoop in the name of terrorism. Even if they make encryption illegal, they won't break coded language if they don't know the code, nor will they be able to detect the more clever steganography algorithms.
IF they're worried about Muslim terrorists, make everyone getting onboard the train have to eat a BLT.
That works for Jewish terrorists, too. Also for my terrorist daughter who is allergic to bacon. Yeah, she's downright MEAN!
And if they're worried about Christian terrorists, tell them they have to suck off a gay dude
EWWW! Being a Christian wouldn't keep me from sucking off a dude, but being heterosexual would. My bible doesn't say "thou shalt not suck cocks". There are 12 commandments for the Christian: Moses' ten and Jesus' two, although all ten are contained in the two.
Anyone who has read the first four books of the New Testament knows that Pat Robertson is s wolf in sheeps' clothing and has converted more Christians to athiesm than all the athiests at slashdot combined. Eat your heart out, you ineffectual piker!
I'm just sick of people telling me they believe all sorts of crazy shit based on "faith"
Then stop baiting them, troll.
My faith is based on personal experience. If you don't believe in penguins I can't blame you; they are rather improbable creatures. A bird that can't fly, but instead swims underwater and eats fish? And lives at the South Pole? Yeah they have pictures but there's photoshop. And yeah, there are all sorts of documents but those were meant to be works of fiction. People claiming to have actually seen penguins are either schitzophrenic, on drugs, or liars.
But I have experienced penguins, there's one at my local zoo. I'm sure you have some exotic explanation for why I imagine I saw a penguin at the zoo.
...and yet they think they can tell us what sort of science is permissible to be taught in public schools.
Much wisdom is contained in the book you so despise. However, I can understand your fear of it.Not me. Evolution does NOT go against anything the Bible says. Even teh Catholic Pope will agree that evolution is real (IANAC).
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Save for mod points for the "frist p0st" and likes. If it hurts your ego that I am "badmouthing" india, either come up with why I am wrong or go do something to change the situation.
PS: Now that is the kind of post that can be modded troll. Go ahead and burn my karma. At least it would be targeted rightly to a trollish post. Idiots.
No, they do not. The have the powers and responsibilities of sovereignty, given to them by the people that instituted said government.
Calling it a "right" is a misuse of the term, and the rest of your post is just as factually inaccurate.
That's me, shamelessly banging everything that moves and constantly drunk off my ass in my "ivory tower".
Name a number that you think would cause me to reconsider renouncing my rights for safety. Start with a BIG number, you'll waste a ton of time otherwise.
And? That was sufficient to make you renounce your rights as a human being? Sorry, you'll have to do better than that.
So, why is your solution to this is anything other than teach them to read?
Hey man, nothing's perfect.
Lastly, if you were being sarcastic (please please please say you were being sarcastic) then you got me.
Blackberries are only popular because they're the cheapest phone with MS Exchange integration, and as you said, the encryption and management tools are good. The GUI sucks, it uses some proprietary communication methods, it uses this ugly backasswards e-mail forwarding system that's tied to a central server that has gone down before and will go down again, and the phone is really nothing special in general.
Now if you disagree and wish to mod me down, mod me "Flamebait" like a man, not this limp-wristed "Overrated" crap.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel