Blackberry Refuses To Spy For India
May 28, 2008 | by Christopher Nickson
Research In Motion, the company that makes the Blackberry phone, has refused demands by the Indian government to decrypt suspicious text messages.
There are only around 115,000 Blackberry users in India, but they’re causing the government a problem. It seems that the country’s security services and department of technology haven’t been able to unencrypt text messages sent on the Blackberry, and they’ve asked Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian company that makes the device, for the master key, worrying that criminals and terrorists might take to the device.
They’d expected co-operation, but they’ve been met with a refusal. RIM claims that its technology prevents any third party – even the company itself – from reading messages sent over the network. In The Times of India RIM was quoted as saying:
"The Blackberry security architecture for enterprise customers is purposefully designed to exclude the capability for Research in Motion (RIM) or any third party to read encrypted information under any circumstances."
India is joining other countries in its worries about being able to crack texts on the Blackberry.
Post Your Comment...Comments
Karl V on Jun 2nd, 2008 at 2:19 PM:
Hah. That was interesting.
Good decision by RIM though.
But it would not have surprised me if they had cooperated with the Indian government. Those big American corporations isn't known for caring for the user.
Rob G on Jun 2nd, 2008 at 6:13 PM:
Good for you RIM! They are not American and you may be right about American corporations not caring about the user when Uncle Sam puts them over the taxing barrel all in the false name of National Security. Homeland Security, wouldn't that mean the borders too?
On the other hand, it is for the sake of corporations that RIM is not cooperating, not the average user.
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Tony Arnold on May 28th, 2008 at 2:49 PM:
Gimme a break India...stop trying to spy on people.