RIM Agrees To Hand Over Its Encryption Keys To India

An anonymous reader writes "BlackBerry maker Research in Motion's (RIM) four-year standoff with the Indian government over providing encryption keys for its secure corporate emails and popular messenger services is finally set to end. RIM recently demonstrated a solution that can intercept messages and emails exchanged between BlackBerry handsets, and make these encrypted communications available in a readable format to Indian security agencies. An amicable solution over the monitoring issue is important for the Canadian smartphone maker since India is one of the few bright spots for the company that has been battling falling sales in its primary markets of the US and Europe. In India, RIM has tripled its customer base close to 5 million over the last two years,"

Comments

Yes but this won't help

[Sir_Sri]

Part of the appeal of RIM was that you knew governments weren't out there stealing secrets sent across your network. I understand that India has a legitimate security need to be able to wiretap communications and so on. But this isn't going to 'help' RIM. This takes away the only major competitive advantage they had, which was that using RIM meant you knew no one in the indian government was going to steal your work and sell it to someone else (which is a serious concern in india).

If anything, this just levels the playing field. And that's bad for RIM, because they aren't competitive.

Re:Yes but this won't help

[Moblaster]

It's pretty clear what happened. They kept the keys secret and held out for a long time on "principle" because that was the best business decision at the time. Then, as the onslaught of iPhone and Android took its toll, the principle changed to survival, because that became the new best business decision.

It's sad, but at this point, it hardly affects any country but India anyway!

Re:Yes but this won't help

[narcc]

As has been pointed out over and over again, This Does Not Affect BES Users.

Everyone else is just as insecure as they always were. If you want security in India, RIM is still your only real choice.

More details here

Saving Face

[Anonymous Coward]

from the fine article:

"But he said there was no access to secure encrypted BlackBerry enterprise communications or corporate emails as these were accessible only to the owners of these services."

The reality is BES uses keys assigned by the owner of the BES server, RIM HAS NOT and CAN NOT give those to anyone, because they dont know them. This has been RIM's position from the begining, and still is. What they HAVE done is give access to the messaging services they run (and therefor have keys to) to the Indian authorities. My understanding is that this was always the case. The article really does not make the distinction between the two clear.

TLDNR: RIM gave what they always give anyone, some minister is useing it to try and save face. Poor reporting means it worked.

Misleading title

[gagol]

Should read "India claims RIM gave encryption keys, RIM strongly denies". http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/02/rim_keys_india/