India Claims RIM Is Letting It Snoop On Blackberry Traffic

A new development in the RIM vs. India fight comes in the form of India claiming that RIM has an interim arrangement to let it spy on it’s citizens who use Blackberry devices:

In a statement on Friday, India’s interior ministry said RIM had assured the government that they would provide the final solution for lawful interception of BlackBerry Messenger services by Jan. 31.

“Accordingly, the BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) services will continue to be available,” the statement said.

The statement did not mention anything about access to corporate e-mail services, but an interior ministry source said RIM had made two presentations.

“I will not say there is no movement,” the source said.

RIM predictably has very little to say:

“RIM can confirm that its discussions with the Indian government continue to be constructive and RIM remains optimistic about reaching a positive and final resolution,” the Canadian firm said in a separate statement on Friday.

So I guess this means that RIM has decided that the almighty dollar is more important than saying “up yours” to a government that wants to spy on their citizens. Too bad. There’s really little reason to use a Blackberry now that the security card is gone.

No wonder the iPbone is outselling the Blackberry.

Leave a Reply

Discover more from The IT Nerd

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading