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.'"
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 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"
> 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.
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
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.
"Business here is done differently".
they didn't bribe and/or bribe the right person.
It doesn't even have to be money, a few hot chicks from Montreal would have done the job. Even take pictures to blackmail pricks causing a problem.
Apparently neither do you. I'm willing to concede I might be confused, as I don't actually use this feature of the Blackberry. However a statement of "You don't know what you are talking about," without any clarification, reference, etc implies that you are either just being contrary, or are not confident enough in your knowledge to state it.
Regardless, it is a completely useless post to just say "You are wrong." Fine, the present your reasoning and what you believe to be correct. If you make a habit of just yelling at people when they are wrong rather than trying to enlighten them, you have no cause to call them out on their ignorance since you are not willing to help fix it.
So let's hear it then.
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"?
Does that apply to the 9/11 terrorists too, or does your statement apply only to anti-India terrorists?
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.
Alright then.
BES is just an e-mail communication link for Blackberries.
BES and BIS includes the MDS (mobile data service) which also encrypts most data. There are certain exclusions such as streaming technologies which may not go through RIM's infrastructure. But it is an end-to-end solution.
Now when a company hosts their own BES I believe that non-email data will still go through RIM's servers. Not sure if a company can host their own MDS servers though.
So that's what I know. I know that most people on /. will tear you apart for the slightest bit of misinformation. So I decided to say little. Sorry if that ticked you off.