The IT Nerd

I really wish this RIM vs India soap opera would end as I think we’re getting sick of this stalemate. RIM today reiterated that they cannot give India access to e-mail… Again:

There is no possibility of us providing any kind of a solution,” RIM vice president Robert Crow told reporters. “There is no solution, there are no keys to be handed.”

So India apparently will have to live with having access to Blackberry Messenger messages. Or do something about it.

I can tell you what’s going to happen next. India is going to demand access to e-mail, then threaten to ban Blackberry devices if they don’t. Then RIM will say they can’t do it for the millionth time, and we’ll be back to this stalemate yet again. Then the merry dance starts anew. Really, either India needs to ban these devices, RIM needs to cave, or RIM needs to pull up stakes and get out of the country. What’s happening right now is not in anybody’s interests. Not RIM’s, and not India’s.

RIM has now officially folded up like a cheap suit when it comes to its dealings with India. Sort of. According to this report, India now has access to Blackberry Messenger messages, but corporate e-mails are still off limits. When it comes to the latter, here’s what RIM said:

“… 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,” the company said on Thursday.

You have to wonder if this is going to be enough to keep the Indian government happy. To me, it’s likely that the Indian government will be back asking for more. Then we’ll see if RIM will come up with some way to keep them happy, or risk being shut out of one of the largest cell phone markets in the world.

Yesterday, I reported that a rumor was circulating around the Interwebs that the Blackberry Playbook might be delayed due to battery life issues. For a change, RIM decided to take the bull by the horns and shot down that rumor:

Any testing or observation of battery life to date by anyone outside of RIM would have been performed using pre-beta units that were built without power management implemented. RIM is on track with its schedule to optimize the BlackBerry PlayBook’s battery life and looks forward to providing customers with a professional grade tablet that offers superior performance with comparable battery life.

And there you have it. The Playbook is on schedule with decent battery life. Do you believe them? I don’t. Until they put out some units for the media to test, I doubt anyone will fully believe them. So how about it RIM? Want to prove me wrong?

Since RIM has appeared to grow a pair, they also took the time to clarify another rumor. Remember the India vs RIM circus? Last I heard, they had a deal. According to RIM, that deal doesn’t include corporate data:

The Economic Times quoted the Indian government note as saying that: “In the final solution proposed by RIM, the decoding will be automatic. Intercepted and decoded data will not travel out of India. RIM has proposed to install [network data analysis systems] in India. In the final solution, intercepted and decoded data will travel between service providers and RIM India.”

RIM, however, called the claim “both false and technologically unfeasible. There will be no change to the security model of BlackBerry Enterprise Service,” the statement said.

Clearly, this statement was meant to keep business customers from running to their local telco to buy iPhones en-masse. But there’s a secondary effect that this statement generates. This statement confirms that all the terrorists need to do is use a Blackberry Enterprise server to evade the snooping of the Indian government, just as I said in this posting. Great going India. You’ve made it easier than ever for the bad guys to drop under the radar.

Still feel secure?

The RIM vs. India circus might be finally coming to an end. It’s being reported that there’s a deal at hand:

The Canada-based Research In Motion, the makers of BlackBerry, has agreed to offer monitoring on cloud-based computing instead of setting up a local server. The Ministry of Home Affairs has agreed to this solution from Research In Motion (RIM).

In a letter to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Vice-President (Government Relations) of RIM, Mr Robert Crow, said, “As per the compliance schedule agreed to by both Research In Motion and the Ministry of Home Affairs, RIM infrastructure is ready to receive and process via the cloud computing-based system lawfully intercepted BlackBerry Messenger data from Indian service providers.”

The Home Ministry had given time till December-end for RIM to come up with a solution that will enable security agencies to snoop into data flowing through BlackBerry devices on a real-time basis. While it is not yet clear how the cloud computing-based monitoring will work, sources said that the Indian authorities were satisfied with the system.

Cloud based computing? Whatever. All I know is that it’s not clear how corporate e-mail will be handled. That’s important because as I’ve said previously, all one has to do if they want to keep security officials from snooping is to fire up your own Blackberry Enterprise Server. If there’s no solution for that then the Indian authorities are wasting their time. Though one could argue that the Indian authorities are wasting their time in any case.

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.

From the “you could see this coming a mile away” department comes news that India doesn’t like the solution that RIM provided it to snoop on Blackberry traffic:

In an internal note, dated September 28, reviewed by ET, the telecom department’s security wing claims security agencies have been unable to intercept or monitor secure email communication made through the (BES) in readable format. “RIM maintains that it does not have the keys that can be offered to security agencies for converting secure corporate email into readable format,” said a senior DoT official with direct knowledge of the matter. The DoT internal note claims law enforcement agencies have failed to intercept chats on the BlackBerry Messenger platform, which runs counters to the home ministry’s recent position that it is satisfied with the interception solution offered by RIM.

Um, hello? You shouldn’t be shocked by this as RIM did say right up front that you guys couldn’t do precisely what you’re trying to do, nor can RIM give you that capability. So please stop whining about it.

Here’s a message for India or anybody else who wants access to Blackberry traffic: It’s not OK for democratic governments to brazenly invade our privacy and have default access to all communication. Get that through your heads.

Please.

I’m not sure who blinked first, but it seems that there is a stay of execution in RIM v. India circus:

After initially setting an Aug. 31 decision deadline, the Ministry of Home Affairs released a statement Monday granting more time for negotiations. Over the next two months, RIM will negotiate with the government and will also provide authorities with access to its encrypted data.

The two parties have been in talks for the past several weeks to negotiate security and privacy issues related to the encrypted e-mails and instant messages sent over RIM’s network.

“RIM have made certain proposals for lawful access by law enforcement agencies and these would be operationalized immediately,” the ministry said in a brief statement. “The feasibility of the solutions offered would be assessed thereafter.”

Here’s how I read this. Either negotiations are going really well, or RIM caved. It’s not clear which. It would be really nice if RIM would clear the air about all of this. But I suspect that they won’t. Too bad. At least their stock went up slightly on the news.

In what amounts to a big F.U., India has rejected RIM and its attempts to stop BlackBerry service from being shut down. Oh yeah, the head of a powerful industry group had this to say about the matter:

“It need not have escalated to this level,” said Rajan Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India. “Folks like RIM have to understand business is done differently here.”

Oh really? You’re just ticked off because RIM hasn’t folded to completely unreasonable demands. Besides, if that’s how business is done in India, then I’ll avoid doing business in India. It’s that simple.

In any case, this is going down to the wire since the deadline is the 31st. Any bets on who blinks first?

News.com is reporting that RIM has asked India to join an industry forum to discuss the issues surrounding security and their products:

RIM says it wants to create a forum where the company and other mobile firms could work with the Indian government to support “the lawful access needs of law enforcement agencies, while preserving the legitimate information security needs of corporations and other organizations in India.”

So why are they doing this (Other than the clear reason that they want to keep making cash in India)? Simple. They know that folding to any one government will cause them to lose enterprise customers as well as street cred. So by standing up to them, they hope to make them back down. All I have to say is good luck with that. But it’s nice to see that RIM has grown a pair and haven’t caved into these stupid demands.