Research in Motion is letting India access BBM - but not emails
When will it end?
In Research in Motion's ongoing struggle with foreign governments over accessing its encrypted data, the latest saga reveals that the company is, for sure, temporarily allowing India's government to access its BlackBerry Messenger service - but remains adamant that corporate emails are still fully secure. Of course, India eventually wants access to everything, something RIM insists is impossible.
A new company statement reads as follows: “No changes can be made to the security architecture for BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers since, contrary to any rumours, the security architecture is the same around the world and RIM truly has no ability to provide its customers’ encryption keys."
With a noose around its neck last year, the Canadian tech titan narrowly managed to avoid a ban on its BlackBerrys by India, extending the deadline to reach a mutual agreement by January 31 of this year. A condition was that India could, until a permanent agreement was reached, access BBM. Rumours then buzzed that emails were compromised as well, and RIM's PR team has surely been enduring a nightmare stifling the lies.
Several overseas countries have battered RIM with demands over the past couple of years, demanding accesses to services for fears of security threats against government, and restrictions of content, the most recent case being RIM blocking porn for Indonesian consumers.
RIM is also not the only technology company facing such battles. Facebook and Google are two other companies facing great barriers as they attempt to stride into strict regions such as China.
