RIM Touts ‘Industry Forum’ In Response To India Demands

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has hit back at the wave of countries seeking to ban certain functions of the BlackBerry device because of security concerns.

RIM said that it has offered to establish an industry forum to work with the Indian government on  “policies and processes surrounding lawful access.”

Ban Background

It has been a tough month for the company. In early August the United Arab Emirates announced it was planning to block RIM’s BlackBerry handsets from sending emails, accessing the Internet, and delivering instant messages. Likewise, Saudi Arabia said it would prevent the use of the BlackBerry-to-BlackBerry instant messaging service.

The Saudi ban was by far the most pressing for RIM, as it had until 6 August to negotiate a suitable arrangement with the Saudi government. Despite RIM stating that it would not compromise, it emerged the smartphone maker was holding last ditch talks and eventually installed a server in both the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Since then it has been reported that other countries, including India, Indonesia, Turkey, and Lebanon are also negotiating with RIM over the same issue. India is now the most pressing case for RIM after the Indian government confirmed the deadline of 31 August for RIM to give the country’s mobile operators access to its encrypted messenger and email services.

Indian Demands

But RIM is thought to be objecting to India’s demands, as there is speculation that they are more intrusive and go further than the other countries demands. In trying to generate support for an “industry forum”, RIM is clearly hoping to involve other tech companies in this who also might be vulnerable such as Skype.

“RIM confirmed today that it is extending an offer to the government of India whereby RIM would lead an industry forum focused on supporting the lawful access needs of law enforcement agencies while preserving the legitimate information security needs of corporations and other organisations in India,” said RIM in a statement.

It said that the right balance needed to be found to address both regulatory and commercial needs in this matter.

RIM Hits Back

“Banning such strong encryption-based information and communications services would severely limit the effectiveness and productivity of India’s corporations,” warned RIM. It also pointed out that the use of strong encryption in wireless technology is not unique to the BlackBerry platform and was an industry-wide matter, as many businesses now require the use of strong encryption for wireless communication.

“Singling out and banning one solution, such as the BlackBerry solution, would be ineffective and counter-productive,” said RIM. “It would be ineffective because anyone perpetrating the misuse of the technology would continue to have easy access to other wireless and wireline services that utilise strong encryption and are readily available in the market today.”

RIM also warned that it wanted to clear up some misconceptions.

It said that it does not possess a “master key”, nor does any “back door” exist in the system that would allow RIM or any third party, under any circumstances, to gain access to encrypted corporate information.

It also said that installing a BlackBerry server within India or anywhere else would not aid the government’s access to encrypted information.

“In fact, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server security architecture was also purposefully designed to perform as a global system independent of geography. All data remains encrypted at all times and through all points of transfer between the customer’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server and the customer’s device (at no point in the transfer is data decrypted and re-encrypted). Therefore, locating BlackBerry Infrastructure in a particular geography does not in any way aid or offer access to the encrypted information that flows through the BlackBerry Infrastructure,” said the company.

RIM also denied that it has offered solutions to certain governments and then denied the same to others.