An Indian Citizen Responds to the RIM Debate

Sandeep,

Not sure if you've seen this article.  Check out this on RIM caving to Senators on a drunk driving app.

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2011/03/senators-pressure-smartphone-makers-over-drunk-driving-app.html

"The senators said in a statement that Research in Motion has agreed to “remove from their online store applications that help drunk drivers evade police.” A message left with the company was not immediately returned."

I find it interesting that RIM caved to the U.S. Senators on a drunk driving app, yet is standing up to the Indian gov.  I know the issues aren't exactly the same but, trying to figure out where RIM should draw the ethical line in the sand, as it were is becoming difficult.

Seems like if they caved to the Senators then they will cave in to the Indian gov. also.

Good points Sandeep. 

I think it is also noteworthy to consider that terrorists could also use alternative communications security solutions such as Gold-lock or Redphone that leave almost zero tracking data for law-enforcement agencies (comes close to obtaining a blackberry from Mexico!). 

I believe that while India has an issue with terrorism, RIM has to maintain what has given them a competitive advantage, security and privacy. 

Also, how can India control messages that are destined to other countries, which don't have that regulation (or from other countries).

As you pointed out, even if they are given the permission to tap into those messages, it would require a huge amount of data processing to analyze that info and obtain valuable information. I"m not even sure the NSA has that capability.

After rambling on my point about the majority, I realized I missed answering a question you posed.

Are all the terrorist in this country using Blackberry’s?

They're not targeting just blackberries... they're targeting all communications.  It's just that right now RIM won't give them the keys they need.  India government is stating that RIM won't meet their requirements for all carries/providers.

It's a no win situation.  When things go wrong like they did in 9/11, the citizens scream and yell.  The intelligence analysts are saying, "whoah, we are doing what we can within the limits (or sometimes just outside the limits)."  A closer look reveals improvements that can be made legitimately, like better communication between multiple agencies.  However, there is much more intel out there than can be achieved under current limitations.

I can tell you as a security analyst involved withi data breaches and incident response, I want all the information I can get to determine what goes in in my environment.  The problem is that some of what I want I cannot get because it would give me access to potentially private information.

It's a balance, and one that needs to be discussed and voted on.  The problem is that when it comes to the vote the majority rules.  If the majority wants the government to be able to monitor my Internet connection without a warrant, then I have to live with that. In the U.S. we have "democracy" and sometimes we forget that the majority wins.  When we're not in the majority, we want to complain.  When we're in the majority, we call the complainers sore losers.

When will it end? I understand the need for a government to protect its citizens, but at what cost? When will they stop? Are all the terrorist in this country using Blackberry’s? I’d be interested to see how they determined that this was the phone of choice for terrorists.

Also, as was mentioned in the article terrorists are not dumb. If this is the case and this news is public, what makes you think that they’re going to continue using Blackberrys? They’ll start using Droids or better yet, plain-old-telephone networks with code words like they’ve done for years.

This is either highly reactive, being pushed for a hidden agenda, or both.

It sounds as though they want the ability to decrypt the information in transit between the end system and RIMs servers.  With the keys they believe they can intercept the transmissions over the network and decrypt on-the-fly.

From what I gather, RIM will work with law enforcement of any nation to provide decryption of messages.  They likely have a strictly enforced process that, when presented with a lawful request by approved government agencies (subpoenas, etc.) they will conduct a capture, decryption, and presentation of data per the request.

Such requests in the U.S. would likely have to be restricted to specific users and provide justification for why this information is needed.

India doesn't want to deal with that hassle and wants their own process to capture, decrypt, search/parse, and present the information.

I wonder... If they had this capability, how many government officials would have BlackBerries?  :)

Ok, in my limited uderstanding. They want all the data from the operators as the encrypted data runs through the mobile network, and they want the keys to encryption from BB end, from which they can open the data. If someone can explain it better it will be great!

I'm not sure that I would want this! If I'm running a BES, this server is part of my Exchange infrustructure. The emails flowing from my Exchange server, through my BES and onto the BlackBerry network are mine. Couple to that, the messages are encrypted, so I'm not sure how the indian government would read the messages in the first place!

It's difficult for me to believe that anti-terrorism is the real issue here. The government wants the power to tap its citizens phones, period. Terrorism is just an excuse.

More about the shock doctrine and the way it works in this video with Rachel Maddow and Naomi Klein.