India-RIM Blackberry pact: Unanswered questions
03-08-2010
Can the war against mobile privacy really be won?
Canada's Research in Motion (RIM) prides itself on the use of its encryption. All communications sent via BlackBerry are highly secure and RIM has used this capability to overcome the reluctance of large corporations to letting emails be sent over a mobile network rather than a secure LAN (VPN).
So will RIM hand over the encryption keys to governments, even if the demand is painted as being part of the war on terrorism? Handing over any encryption keys may lose RIM many of its its hard-won customer base overnight.
If one is to believe news reports, RIM has for the first time agreed to allow Indian security agencies to monitor its BlackBerry services. It has offered to share with Indian security agencies its technical codes for corporate email services, open up access to all consumer emails within 15 days and also develop tools in six to eight months to allow monitoring of chats.
While India had raised security concerns with BlackBerry services, it is not planning a ban, the country's internal security chief said last week, adding that the company had assured them that it would be addressing the Indian government's concerns.
Even so, according to some analysts, the war against mobile privacy may not be won yet. RIM may have succeeded in letting the problem go quietly away by reaching a compromise behind closed doors. However, according to RIM's own statement earlier, under its security system customers have their own encryption key and "only the customer ever possesses a copy" of that key. RIM says it does not have a master key and there is no back door that would let it or any third party gain unauthorized access to the key or corporate data.
A similar spat took place in the early 1990s between the US government and Philip Zimmermann, author of a brilliant email encryption program called PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). PGP was so good the US government couldn't crack it and tried to stop it. The move failed because PGP simply spread across the Internet like wildfire.
The same thing could happen if RIM handed over the encryption keys for its email system to any government. Users could simply respond by encrypting their own emails with a utility like PGP. So they would become unreadable by the governments, anyway.
RIM has been targeted because encryption technology is the heart of its network, unlike your local telecom operator who allows voice and data calls to pass unencrypted. While Blackberry voice calls can go unencrypted through the local telco, data and email go through RIM's Network Operations Centres (NOC). Every mobile phone operator that wants to offer BlackBerry devices has to have a connection to an NOC - there is apparently one based in Canada to cover the Americas and one covering Europe and Asia. A company that wants to offer BlackBerrys to its employees, meanwhile, has to install software within its own IT systems that can communicate with the NOC.
When a user's inbox receives a new email, that software securely communicates with the NOC, which then connects securely to the BlackBerry over a mobile phone network to deliver the email. It uses compression technology to make sure the email can be squeezed over even the most congested network. Numerous research reports over the past year have suggested that BlackBerrys are at least five times more efficient at email and attachment viewing than any other platform.
RIM has since opened its network up to consumer email services such as Gmail and Hotmail, which together with the introduction of a range of stylish devices aimed at the consumer market has created a boom in usage of BlackBerry phones among teenagers. Opening up the RIM network to the web has also allowed internet browsing, which is also apparently faster on a BlackBerry than other devices. They are three times more efficient than other carriers, according to a recent report by Rysavy Research.
Fact base from stories in the Guardian, Gomonews, Economic Times and Business Standard
Canada's Research in Motion (RIM) prides itself on the use of its encryption. All communications sent via BlackBerry are highly secure and RIM has used this capability to overcome the reluctance of large corporations to letting emails be sent over a mobile network rather than a secure LAN (VPN).
So will RIM hand over the encryption keys to governments, even if the demand is painted as being part of the war on terrorism? Handing over any encryption keys may lose RIM many of its its hard-won customer base overnight.
If one is to believe news reports, RIM has for the first time agreed to allow Indian security agencies to monitor its BlackBerry services. It has offered to share with Indian security agencies its technical codes for corporate email services, open up access to all consumer emails within 15 days and also develop tools in six to eight months to allow monitoring of chats.
While India had raised security concerns with BlackBerry services, it is not planning a ban, the country's internal security chief said last week, adding that the company had assured them that it would be addressing the Indian government's concerns.
Even so, according to some analysts, the war against mobile privacy may not be won yet. RIM may have succeeded in letting the problem go quietly away by reaching a compromise behind closed doors. However, according to RIM's own statement earlier, under its security system customers have their own encryption key and "only the customer ever possesses a copy" of that key. RIM says it does not have a master key and there is no back door that would let it or any third party gain unauthorized access to the key or corporate data.
A similar spat took place in the early 1990s between the US government and Philip Zimmermann, author of a brilliant email encryption program called PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). PGP was so good the US government couldn't crack it and tried to stop it. The move failed because PGP simply spread across the Internet like wildfire.
The same thing could happen if RIM handed over the encryption keys for its email system to any government. Users could simply respond by encrypting their own emails with a utility like PGP. So they would become unreadable by the governments, anyway.
RIM has been targeted because encryption technology is the heart of its network, unlike your local telecom operator who allows voice and data calls to pass unencrypted. While Blackberry voice calls can go unencrypted through the local telco, data and email go through RIM's Network Operations Centres (NOC). Every mobile phone operator that wants to offer BlackBerry devices has to have a connection to an NOC - there is apparently one based in Canada to cover the Americas and one covering Europe and Asia. A company that wants to offer BlackBerrys to its employees, meanwhile, has to install software within its own IT systems that can communicate with the NOC.
When a user's inbox receives a new email, that software securely communicates with the NOC, which then connects securely to the BlackBerry over a mobile phone network to deliver the email. It uses compression technology to make sure the email can be squeezed over even the most congested network. Numerous research reports over the past year have suggested that BlackBerrys are at least five times more efficient at email and attachment viewing than any other platform.
RIM has since opened its network up to consumer email services such as Gmail and Hotmail, which together with the introduction of a range of stylish devices aimed at the consumer market has created a boom in usage of BlackBerry phones among teenagers. Opening up the RIM network to the web has also allowed internet browsing, which is also apparently faster on a BlackBerry than other devices. They are three times more efficient than other carriers, according to a recent report by Rysavy Research.
Fact base from stories in the Guardian, Gomonews, Economic Times and Business Standard
