BlackBerry Giving Encryption Keys to Indian Government
RIM encrypts e-mail between BlackBerry devices and the server the server with 256-bit AES encryption. The Indian government doesn’t like this at all; they want to snoop on the data. RIM’s response was basically: That’s not possible. The Indian government’s counter was: Then we’ll ban BlackBerries. After months of threats, it looks like RIM is giving in to Indian demands and handing over the encryption keys.
EDITED TO ADD (5/27): News:
BlackBerry vendor Research-In-Motion (RIM) said it cannot hand over the message encrytion key to the government as its security structure does not allow any ‘third party’ or even the company to read the information transferred over its network.
EDITED TO ADD (7/2): Looks like they have resolved the impasse.
Davi Ottenheimer • May 21, 2008 2:46 PM
Do they have a choice if they want to operate in India? Anyone know offhand what the record of US companies versus foreign countries might be? They don’t seem to do so well on their own.
If I remember correctly it took the US State Department intervention in the eBay case before the Indian government backed down.