Slashdot Mirror
BlackBerry Battle In India Going Down To the Wire
crimeandpunishment writes "With just days before the deadline, BlackBerry's maker was shot down by India in its latest effort to avoid having its services cut off for about a million Indian users of the device. Research in Motion's effort to broaden the debate over data encryption were rejected. The Indian government wants access to users' emails. The head of a powerful industry group in India accused RIM of taking the wrong approach to negotiations, saying, 'It need not have escalated to this level. Folks like RIM have to understand business is done differently here.'"
what the fuck is their fucking problem?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I hope they stand their ground.
Do they want to secure customer data, or provide a documented mechanism for institutional wiretaps.
They should pick one and stick with it.
Ok, the Indian government can tell Blackberry to give up its keys for a particular encryption layer, but what is to stop people from using RSA 512-bit encryption with their e-mails? Wouldn't this force terrorists to pay attention to what encryption methods they are using?
"With just days before the deadline, BlackBerry's maker was shot down by India in its latest effort to avoid having its services cut off for about a million Indian users of the device. Research in Motion's effort to broaden the debate over data encryption were rejected. The Indian government wants access to users' emails.
Keep their hands off the emails.
The head of a powerful industry group in India accused RIM of taking the wrong approach to negotiations, saying, 'It need not have escalated to this level. Folks like RIM have to understand business is done differently here.'
So if they had to do something that was a crime that would be punished in Canada to be compliant with India, it's excusable?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
RIM will capitulate, like they have everywhere else.
I wonder which side will win...
crazy dynamite monkey
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Why should RIM even have the encryption keys? If they really wanted their customer's information to be secure, wouldn't they implement RSA in their communications? That way when governments come knocking, they can just say "Sorry, but these aren't the encryption keys you're looking for."
I think India needs to understand that for a service like RIM's if the people purchasing it can't trust it to carry their own private thoughts/conversations, then people won't pay for the service anyway. It isn't a matter of security or not, it is a matter of privacy vs big brother government. I can respect that India has issues with terrorist acts and is in a geo-political volatile area with respect to their neighbor nations. But shutting down RIM's business because India doesn't have cart-blanc access to any email sent over the devices doesn't really do anything in terms of actual security as there are thousands of other ways to send the same information securely, including but not limited to free internet email systems, to even setting up their own private email server (which takes all of 1 hour to do) and running it out of a home or even a laptop, using any of the dozens of free dynamic dns systems available.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
In India the government wants to have access to all communication to "obstruct and prevent terrorism". There is no "Bill of Rights" in India that grants the freedoms that exist in America and other countries. To do business in India you have to let the government have access. If you do not let them have access you cannot do business.
What is there not to understand?
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
Blackberry's biggest strength is its secure email. That's why so many corporations allow it. Assuring paranoid corporate people that their email is safe with them is practically their entire business model!
I can't imagine it would be worth ruining that reputation just to keep such a small part of their market.
Take away that, and all they have left is their little keyboards.
> business is done differently here.
Yeh, that's a funny thing. In Europe, we spent seven years building a movement and fighting software patents. In India, they were proposed, and fought over for three weeks, and discussed in the media for maybe one week, and the government retracted the software patents proposal.
The issue isn't over, but things are certainly done different over there. I discussed it with some locals there and they told me that foreign interference doesn't go down well. Not at all. Red Hat sent a letter to the Indian government saying that software patents are dumb. (Well done Red Hat! You were our only supporter!) Locals told me that Red Hat took a chance with that letter. Other companies that try too hard to pressure the government get kicked out.
The software patent battle there is still in progress there, but foreigners should be wary of their preconceptions of how lobbying is done.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
First of all, that's rubbish. Articles 19, 20, 21 and 22 of the Constitution of India guarantee most of the same freedoms that people in any other democracy enjoy.
As for this move, we understand their position, but we think it's wrong. Or is the concept of critical analysis too difficult?
You make it sound like you had plans in the first place, fellow basement dweller.
One is that terrorism is kind of a bullshit excuse. India just wants the ability to easily monitor e-mails without any sort of oversight. It is an excuse not a reason to a large extent.
HOWEVER, you do find that people will often take the easy way out and just use what is included. I'm sure in your daily life you meet many people who understand fuck-all about security. Guess what? Terrorists are just people. They do not tend to have good central IT groups that enforce good standards on the organizations. They don't always know about this shit.
As a Canadian, I'm happy to see RIM's success thus far, and obviously continued growth would need to take advantage of other markets, who have different laws. While it's not something RIM wants to do, I think they will eventually cave to India's demands.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, RIM is in business, not politics. It is not their place to try and change things in India, it is the Indians'. On the other hand, to be ethical, they cannot knowingly place responsibility on a different authority if it is known that they will then act unethically. Ultimately, I think it will be better for the Canadian IT market if RIM just holds their nose and makes it happen. This is simply not a battle they can, or should win. If Indians don't like the way their government treats their privacy, they need to change things themselves.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Near as I can tell this is all about the Blackberry Enterprise Server stuff. While organizations can run their own, RIM also runs it and you can subscribe to it. It encrypts communications from them to your phone and back, but then they have to decrypt it to be able to send it via e-mail. It isn't an end-to-end setup, BES is just an e-mail communication link for Blackberries.
Here's the link to Red Hat's letter:
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
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In other words, "you haven't bribed the right people yet." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126199094
.. of terrorists who are planning attacks are embedded in every corner of India.
It is several times worse than all of the spy or terrorist networks in the US combined.
When you're in the situation India is, already with the incompetent politicians hindering critical issues like national security, you'll realize you don't want an external blocker to your ways of preventing terrorism.
Has it ever occurred to you that the very environment of fear and distrust is what breeds terrorism in the first place and that one of the reasons that the U.S. has had few terrorist attacks is that the vast majority of the public as a whole doesn't feel like the government is out to get them? We get to know our neighbors, and for the most part, if a neighbor were hatching a terrorist plot, usually somebody would notice. We do that because we know that the only thing standing between us and anarchy or tyranny is ourselves. Historically, the closer any country has come to being a police state, beyond a certain point, the more problems they have had. It's a vicious cycle, and the harder you try to clamp down, the more violent the dissent, until it becomes uncontrollable. That's basic psychology, really.
It would take any competent user all of five minutes to get around this. All you have to do is use an IMAP mail service other than RIM's. The people who care about using push email are not the terrorists. They are the businesses that employ your citizens. The terrorists couldn't give a rat's ass about push email. They use it because it is there. The second they get wind that RIM is going to make all their email available, they will migrate their data to Gmail, delete all their email, and close their accounts. By the time RIM actually capitulates, any information the Indian government could possibly hope to obtain will have long since been destroyed. And when the Indian government goes after Gmail, they'll move to Yahoo Mail. And when they go after Yahoo Mail, they'll move to something else. It's so easy to change ISPs that it is utterly naive to think that what you're talking about will have ANY real impact on terrorism.
You can't stop terrorism by screwing over everyone else. That just makes your citizens angry and resentful of the government. And after long enough, those angry, resentful citizens decide to take up arms. Then, a terrorist cell is born.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
While I agree with you in principle, as the Indian government said, they do things differently there.
Sorry, but the Indian gov't needs to go fuck itself.
With respect to Blackberry, the India doesn't do things differently. India wants to do things differently, and quite frankly everyone at RIM is a bunch of fucktards for giving in to the first country that decided to publicly swing its cock in their direction.
I quite personally don't give a flying fuck whether or not any government listens in on what it chooses. But I'll say for damned certain that if something is touted as "secure" and "encrypted," having a man in the middle makes that statement 100% bullshit. RIM can go die in a fire or simply remove their encryption altogether. If anyone other than the sender and recipient can read an "encrypted" message, then the shit's not encrypted by the understood sense of the term. End of story.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
... then lots of businesses outside of India will need to stop doing business with businesses located in India. It can hurt Indian business by doing this.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The US government is getting some info from RIM, but it does not include getting copies of email. BB is popular among foreigners coming to India to do business. If RIM is cut off, this will hurt India's ability to do business with the rest of the world that doesn't have this approach to government.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I agree. Many US, EU, and Asian companies have joint ventures with Indian firms. If blackberry communications are no longer privileged, the government (and others) has a strong incentive abuse corporate information (trading trading stocks and bonds in London or the US). Companies count on Blackberry for the integration and PRIVACY. Guess Indian firms will have to rely on PGP encrypted email communication. I'm assuming this is not illegal in India, or is it?
my mom posts on slashdot.
Duuh....Chill Dude.
"If blackberry communications are no longer privileged the companies would do XYZ"
1. Blackberry communications are indeed not privileged. Its just that the dumb Indian security agencies cannot get a way around it like the US.
2. If blackberries goes away, companies would switch to Nokia, Apple or any other damn device...
But what's really gonna happen is that Blackberry would cave soon, and tell the government officials, "you nutjobs should have figured it out yourself without creating a big fracas, but lets help. Anyways thanks for the publicity !!"
I really, really hope RIM bites the bullet on this and either calls India's bluff or takes the hit and moves on. If they start selling the only real advantage they have (privacy/security) to any government that wants it, they'll all be begging for jobs at Apple within 5 years. They've already played footsie with the US, Canada and some other First World countries that at least go a little past paying only lip service to individual rights and freedoms. If they start allowing Third World countries to get into the party, they're screwed.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Do some research before spewing nonsense on slashdot, you nincompoop. India has as many freedoms as any other democracy. Check it.
I'm not saying that terrorists are something other than scum.
You might not, but I will say it. One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Frankly, it's the Indians who need to be telling you this. Globalization doesn't mean you get to pick and choose those attributes of trade which fit your needs best. When you understand this so well, why is it that we constantly hear angry voices from the USA about outsourcing, which is a direct result of globalization? Not a single India related post on slashdot is complete without an anti-outsourcing rant by some smartass. Why is it that I don't see guys like you replying to such people with something like: "Hey, this is globalization, deal with it"?
provider
True but many Indians use Blackberries and they'd be pissed if they could not use them anymore. Others, who have and conduct international business, will find their foreign contacts less willing to do business.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This Govt thing on spying own citizens is not right.
A vast majority of terrorists do not deserve the appellation of "freedom fighter".
Intentional targeting of innocent civilians is inherently at odds with freedom.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I'm not going to take the time to respond to every point of the post above, because it is both ill-informed and steeped in colonialist garbage. Suffice it to say that the security challenges faced by the United States, a massive island nation with no meaningful rivals within several thousand km, and India, which is bordered by hostile states armed with nuclear weapons that have a long and proven history of sponsoring terrorist activity, are in no way commensurate. You can say what you want to about RIM, the right to privacy, or whatever, but the bottom line is that it is not an "environment of fear and distrust" which creates terrorism in India, but massive social/cultural/religious/economic tensions that simply have no analogue in the United States. Go read about the Naxalites, open a history book about the British Raj, and then come back when your opinion is worth something.
The terrorists couldn't give a rat's ass about push email. They use it because it is there. [...] It's so easy to change ISPs that it is utterly naive to think that what you're talking about will have ANY real impact on terrorism.
Or, perhaps, just host their own mail servers? For $20/month you can get a virtual Linux machine. You could just play a shell game hosting the mail on a succession of virtuals.
Okay, I'll bite. What do you think social and economic tensions are, if not an atmosphere of distrust?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Turning over data in response to a subpoena is not the same thing as warrantless wiretaps, and turning over data in response to a subpoena from another country is not the same thing as turning it over in response to a subpoena from the country where ISP is. I would expect the latter. The former would be horrifying. If any arbitrary country could subpoena anybody's mail, then we would have some pretty serious problems.
Further, even if those particular companies have agreements with India's government, the near-total anonymity afforded by many of those services would make it very difficult for the government to determine much beyond what that one person knows. You can usually get that much from interrogation alone. If you're going to be spying on someone over a long period of time, it's usually because you're trying to find out who that person knows, and find out who the other players are. That's problematic if you're trying to get subpoenas against a dozen different ISPs in a dozen countries, only to come up dry because all the accounts were created under pseudonyms.
I'm not assuming that terrorists are highly efficient outfits, but I am assuming that they have computer people among their ranks. That's a very safe assumption, from everything I've read on the subject. And even if I'm wrong, you have to assume that they're not complete morons. If they are aware that their communication channel is compromised, they won't keep using it as if nothing has changed.... It's not like phone wiretaps. The bad guys have to assume that the government has the ability to tap everything, filter it, and identify threats. So as soon as the government gets the ability to tap it at all, the entire use of that channel becomes immediately worthless, ensuring its swift replacement with something more secure.
And even if the Indian government managed to get EVERY ISP in the entire world to cooperate, there's still stuff like Freenet that makes encrypted email seem like a toy.
In short, tapping electronic communications can only work against VERY clueless bad guys, and the government can't possibly be clueless enough not to know this, so you have to ask yourself what they're really trying to accomplish.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Nobody told you to adopt corruption, which by the way, is not a uniquely Indian/Chinese attribute, as you seem to imply. India does have a monstrous bureaucracy, but I'm really not sure what that has to do with 'globalization' in the context of this article.
RIM isn't doing India a favour by 'giving us their technology' as you put it. Had that been the case, they'd have shown the middle finger to the Indian Govt. as soon as this issue came up. They need India more than India needs them - fledgling Indian telecom companies like Micromax and Karbonn are waiting to grab the market, and RIM knows that.
Finally, the issue of whether or not the Indian govt. should monitor suspects (with a warrant, btw) is best left to us. We'll write petitions, vote out the Govt. or protest on the streets if we feel that the Govt. ought to stop monitoring suspected blackberry communication (even with a warrant). It is not RIM's job to decide for us, and they better accept the demands of the democratically elected Indian Govt. if they want to do business here. Leave it to us Indian citizens to take on the Govt. We'll do it if we want to.
When RIM gives in the India's security service it will become a world broker of user messages. How, just route user messages throught India. What India reads the world reads.
Welcome earthlings.