RIM Reaches Temporary Agreement With India

Canadian_Daemon writes with news that India has granted a 60-day reprieve for their threat to ban BlackBerry devices while the government evaluates RIM's proposal for "lawful access" to users' encrypted data. "The Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement it would review the situation in 60 days after the Department of Telecommunications studies the feasibility of routing BlackBerry services through a server in India. India wants greater access to encrypted corporate e-mails and instant messaging, though it remains unclear precisely what concessions Research In Motion agreed to in order to avert the ban. About one million BlackBerry users would have been affected in India. 'RIM have made certain proposals for lawful access by law enforcement agencies and these would be operationalized immediately. The feasibility of the solutions offered would be assessed thereafter,' the ministry said."

Comments

RIM job

[roman_mir]

Is it the kind of agreement when RIM rims the Indian gov't and pays stacks of bribes and then all rim users are also forced to rim the Indian gov't?

well, judge for yourself

About one million BlackBerry users would have been affected in India.

"RIM have made certain proposals for lawful access by law enforcement agencies and these would be operationalized immediately. The feasibility of the solutions offered would be assessed thereafter," the ministry said.

Re:RIM job

[spun]

I'm not sure what you're so angry about. Do you disagree with a government's right to subpoena evidence? What are the bribes you are talking about? This doesn't sound that much different than our American law enforcement demanding the ability to tap phones, given a proper warrant. If it is different, you haven't explained how, and if it is not different, you haven't explained how society would benefit by letting people keep secrets from the courts.

Re:RIM job

[bhagwad]

This is different because the Indian government wants the right to tap phones without a warrant. The whole privacy thing hasn't really been discussed in India yet.

Re:RIM job

[spun]

And ice cream tastes delicious. Tell me something less obvious and more related to this story. Unless I am missing the part where India does not require warrants, this just sounds like what we did here in America, requiring that telecommunications providers give law enforcement the means to lawfully tap communications when a court grants them a warrant.

Re:RIM job

[bhagwad]

That's what I'm saying. I'm saying that the Indian government wants the ability to access private communications without any sort of check or balance and without a court order. I've been following this story for some time now (since I live here) and I'm pretty sure of this.

Use PGP

[VincenzoRomano]

As an end-to-end encryption and validation. Then RIM is free to give access to that.

Re:Sneakernet

[Anonymous Coward]

The government can buy sneakers. The problem is knowing who to trust in your sneakernet.

Is there a right to keep secrets about crimes?

[spun]

I don't think there is a right to keep crimes secret in any society in the world. In fact, I believe it is in society's best interest to allow courts to compel testimony and subpoena evidence. I also do not see how you can claim that 'lawful access' is the same as 'unlawful access.' Or are you claiming that all governments everywhere will always lie to their citizens? For your own sake I will caution you that when you claim that governments are completely corrupt and evil and always lie, you are veering off into territory where few rational individuals will follow. Most of us recognize that democratic governments, while flawed, are vastly preferably to the tyranny of the strong that would exist without them.

Re:Is there a right to keep secrets about crimes?

[bhagwad]

Or are you claiming that all governments everywhere will always lie to their citizens?

If they have the power to do so, they will. Therefore, we must not let them get that power.

Re:Is there a right to keep secrets about crimes?

[bhagwad]

Let's just say that as a rule of thumb, you give people as little power as possible. And if you have to give them power, you provide stringent checks, balances, redress mechanisms and transparency. The Indian government (my government) simply doesn't yet have those processes in place. Therefore I'm not willing to risk losing something as precious as my privacy if I have to trust a third party blindly.

Re:Is there a right to keep secrets about crimes?

[TheGratefulNet]

Or are you claiming that all governments everywhere will always lie to their citizens?

yes, of course. are you new to the planet earth or what?

Re:makes sense

[bhagwad]

I can see cases where the information will be abused but such risks are no match for the benefits.

Oh please. I'm an Indian and this is bullshit. What are the "benefits?" The chances of me dying in a terror attack are less than being hit by lightning. I'll take that risk and won't complain if I die thank you very much.

Why BIS is bad

[nathana]

See, this is exactly why device manufacturers shouldn't be making devices that are entirely reliant upon an external "cloud" service that is also controlled by the device manufacturer. If Blackberry was merely making devices that could be configured to talk to any server(s) using industry-standard protocols, they wouldn't get themselves into the kind of situation where 1 million deployed devices could have been turned into doorstops overnight. (Maybe my understanding of the way that Blackberries work is misinformed, and so my rant here could be completely groundless -- and just for the record, I'm open to correction -- but I am under the impression that Blackberries need to be in constant communication with the BIS servers that Blackberry themselves run in order to function.)

This is also why the whole push notification system that Apple came up with for the iPhone is stupid. If something goes wrong with servers that Apple controls, then suddenly that feature across every single phone that has shipped to-date is dead. Device features should not be wholly reliant upon a service that the device manufacturer controls...all you are doing is making a single point-of-failure when you do that.

-- Nathan