By Carl Bagh: Subscribe to Carl's RSS feed
July 29, 2010 8:44 AM EDT
Research in Motion (RIM)'s BlackBerry may face ban unless it complies with the Indian government's demand for scrutiny of its data transfers in the wake of renewed threat of terrorist attacks, following a similar demand by the United Arab Emirates early this week.
The issue under scanner is that terrorists can use Blackberry services to coordinate their attacks as the encrypted data sent by BlackBerry devices cannot be detected easily.
BlackBerry uses high grade encryption for data transfers that internal security agencies have found hard to crack so far. Hence the Indian Home Ministry has reiterated its demand that RIM reconfigure its encryption format to comply with intelligence agencies' requirements so that the messages could be monitored.
Since the Mumbai attacks in 2008, which killed 166 people, Indian authorities have taken telecom companies to task, like restricting pre-paid services in Kashmir since it does not require individual proof verification. It is also compelling other telecom vendors to allow inspection of their data regularly.
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The BlackBerry case had gained limelight when the terrorists who were trapped in a hotel in Mumbai in 2008 were found to have used Blackberrys to communicate and receive alerts on police response to the attack, despite cut off of cable feeds to the hotel.
Earlier this week, UAE had raised concerns as to how RIM stores and transfers data on the network with servers outside Emirates. "Certain BlackBerry applications allow folks to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial, and notional security repercussions," said a statement by the Emirates government.
BlackBerry's core strength has been the level of security it provides through high level of encryption - a hit with the business community - which explains its resistance to allow inspection of data. Since RIM's server is based in Canada, data transfer and inspection becomes a diplomatic hassle for internal security agencies in other countries severely affecting their agility.
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