Slashdot Mirror
Blackberry Gives India Access To Servers
Meshach writes "As happened earlier in Saudi Arabia Blackberry has reached a deal that allows Indian authorities access to the transmissions of hand held devices. Much of the fear comes from worries about terrorists: Pakistani-based militants used mobile and satellite phones in the 2008 attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai."
I know RIM is only providing meta-data on the content, but honestly, are you telling me that this *wont* be used to spy on a corporate competitor?
India is corrupt in a very "Who me?" way. This law has only abuses, in a country where you can buy a SIM for 5 dollars, with a photocopy of just about anybody's id. The terrorists don't need to bother with the BB or anything even remotely expensive - the underworld maybe (The D Company), but not the "kill them all and let God sort them out" category of terrorists.
But it's not like India is the first place to do this. Echelon was used similarly, I guess to spy on foreign firms.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Of course, there are only a billion or so trivial ways to privately communicate using a public network, from one-time pads, to stenography [in text, images, video, or other binary files], to using ssh, or https.
And for all you higher and mightier Americans using IMAP, I'm sure you know the police can request any email, without a warrant, for any email stored on a server for more than 180 days (and now believes that they can also get any email stored on the server for less than 180 days if you've read it) http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/emailprivacy/ I wonder if GMail has a portal that lets the police do this or if they just forward all email to the FBI as it passes 180 days...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
They can always go back to using number stations on the shortwave bands. Just a thought.
and they made my decision on which smartphone to get when my Blackberry Storm kicks the bucket a whole lot easier. One of the reasons I went with them was because of their relative integrity when it comes to my information. If that practice is going out the window then my business just went out the window for them as well, and I'm certain I'm not alone.
Verizon has delegated enough authority to let the UAE write SSL certificates impersonating any site which will get automatically accepted by most browsers, so don't you think it's getting hard to know if your communications are actually secure from eavesdropping?
Part of the problem of secure communications is that there are too many governments who don't want people to have them because people can (and do) plot nefarious things with them.