RIM To Monitor BlackBerries For India

The saga continues…..

If you remember from our last episode, the Indian government was totally lame didn’t have the capabilities to monitor anything that had encryption above 40 bits. So they wanted RIM to dumb their devices down. That of course didn’t happen. So now there’s a new plan. The plan de jour is for RIM to have the public security keys for the devices, and the government having the private keys (click here for an explanation). Each of these keys reveal little without the other, so it’s an arrangement that in theory would allow the Government to spy, RIM to maintain their security, and have this problem go away.

Oh yeah, there’s a catch:

“Canada-based RIM officials are believed to have asked the DoT to take the responsibility of being the custodian of the Private Keys and also to bear the consequences if their was a loss of essential data of the customers.”

Sneaky…. Shift the burden of responsibility to the Indian government to insulate yourself from any potential lawsuits if they screw up. That’s brilliant! Let’s see what happens next in this soap opera…

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