Spying

Blackout for BlackBerry in India – some services facing problems

BlackBerry Services are under fire from the Indian government, with the latest word from the Intelligence Bureau stating that BlackBerry services will be banned in India if the concerns raised by the Indian government are not addressed by the Canadian developer of BlackBerry Smartphone Research In Motion Limited. Although it’s not a total ban, if the ban is enforced, then the BlackBerry phones will not become a pack of junk; it is just that the BlackBerry Messenger and business enterprise services will be shut down but the USP for BlackBerry will be lost for sure. India is not alone in the demand; United Arab Emirates has already planned to halt these services from Oct. 11.
BlackBerry uses a push based service. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server in Canada redirects new e-mail, calendar updates, documents and other data straight to the user over the internet and cell phone network. While it sends data to the handset, it encrypts the data with triple data encryption standard. This high level of encryption is making it tough for Indian security agencies to monitor via the servers of BlackBerry, which are in Canada. RIM declines to provide access to its servers and to lower the encryption level as sought by Indian agencies. RIM has offered to help India track the emails without sharing the encryption details and also the ‘Metadata’ (in terms of who sent the email, to whom it was sent, and so on) but the security officials are not impressed with it.
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