RIM Mumbai Assists Indian Gov't Blackberry Surveillance
Blackberry makers Research in Motion have responded to a threat by India's government to shut down Blackberry web services in India by establishing a facility in Mumbai to assist in lawful surveillance of Blackberry devices, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. At issue was a complaint first issued in 2010 that Internet activity on Blackberry devices could not be tapped; the Indian Government has provided RIM with several deadlines to comply with their request to amend that limitation.
The facility apparently provides the Indian Government with information related to chat and other Internet communications conducted on Blackberry phones. The Indian government is not currently able to intercept and decode the information themselves, which means currently they must disclose the names of suspects to RIM when conducting surveillance. The move by RIM does not address all of the Indian government's complaints. A remaining area of contention is the ability to intercept and decode blackberry email services, something Blackberry so far insists is not possible due to the smartphone's stringent security measures. The Indian government as also asked to install an official at RIM's Waterloo, Canada HQ, a request that has so far no been granted.
For their part, RIM insists they are in compliance with the government's requests and have stated "We are not operating under any deadlines and we believe the government of India is now applying its security policy in a consistent manner to all handset makers and service providers in India, which means that RIM should not be singled out any more than any other provider."
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Well, this may sound like News to you... but all the other providers other than RIM here in India have non encrypted mail going out, since that option is basically set to be unencrypted or open right from the handset level to the mail servers.
RIM certainly ain't useful in india for anything else other then the conversations on the phone since it has every service in a package that needs to be paid for, all other handsets happen to offer all the services free or within the present package.
The hyped propaganda did certainly help sell handsets here in India, cos kids mistook the encryption as being something that their parents would never find out about, not actually knowing the real situation, presently , they have a return volume of about 80% in this country .... unhappy customers..... faulty cheap handsets.... and all in all a very bad buy, especially because it caters only to corporates.
By RIM, I mean Blackberry Handsets.... sry my mistake.
And oh..... it can't assist the govt......
They just bent over...... capitalistic greed is like anyone whore..... the BB guys couldn't buy off the most corrupt of Indian officials since this was a security issue as per the government opinion. The buying couldn't happen cos the point was open to the citizens of the country, and that awareness would have cost the govt. the polls thus, BB decided whether they could loosen the security noose, compromise on that or then give up on getting a single dime from one of the worlds biggest growing market for cell phones.
It was a pretty simple choice.... revenue expected against QOS..... in a "Developing Nation".... doesn't harm company reputations , does it?
we get it, you are mad because somebody put too much chili in your curry.
This might be hard to believe, but your government does this to you to.
And oh..... it can't assist the govt......They just bent over...... capitalistic greed is like anyone whore..... the BB guys couldn't buy off the most corrupt of Indian officials since this was a security issue as per the government opinion. The buying couldn't happen cos the point was open to the citizens of the country, and that awareness would have cost the govt. the polls thus, BB decided whether they could loosen the security noose, compromise on that or then give up on getting a single dime from one of the worlds biggest growing market for cell phones.It was a pretty simple choice.... revenue expected against QOS..... in a "Developing Nation".... doesn't harm company reputations , does it?
So you blame RIM for your government screwing you over? Talk about stupid...
If India was conducting surveillence on all devices except Blackberries then what makes people bash RIM for caving into the request? Not like iOS/Android had any security to begin with...