RIM Calls India’s Email Demands ‘Astonishing’

By Kee

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By Amol Sharma | The Wall Street Journal | March 14, 2011

NEW DELHI—A top executive of BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion Ltd. said Indian security agencies are making “rather astonishing” demands for increased powers to monitor email and other data traffic, raising serious privacy issues that threaten to harm the country’s reputation with foreign investors.

Robert Crow, vice president of industry and government relations for RIM, said India’s Home Ministry, which oversees domestic security, wants the ability to intercept in real time any communication on any Indian network—including BlackBerry’s highly secure corporate-email service—and get it in readable, plain-text format.

Such a broad requirement raises the question of whether the government believes any communications are legally off-limits, he said, including email conversations of foreign ambassadors and financial records that get transmitted over secure telecommunications networks to Indian outsourcing companies.

“You connect those dots and you’re saying, ‘Holy smokes,’ ” Mr. Crow said during an interview. “This claim is made in an environment where we don’t really have any privacy- or data-protection laws—and where we have a pretty poor administrative record of keeping similar things like wiretaps secret.”

A spokesman for India’s Home Ministry declined to comment. Government officials in India have previously said they want to ensure suspected terrorists and criminals can’t elude government surveillance by using newfangled communications technologies. Under current Indian law, the home secretary—the top bureaucrat in the Home Ministry—authorizes all telecom surveillance by central-government agencies for 60 days at a time.

For several months, RIM has faced demands from India to give security agencies a way to access encrypted messages on BlackBerry’s corporate-email service. BlackBerry has repeatedly said its system is designed so that it doesn’t have the “keys” to unlock users’ messages—and it has refused to change its technology architecture in any one of the 175 countries where it offers service.

Mr. Crow said he is heartened, at least, that India no longer appears to be singling out RIM. India has realized, he said, that other advanced services—such as virtual private networks, or VPNs, and peer-to-peer messaging services, are outside its surveillance reach.

It isn’t clear whether the Indian government has set any firm deadline for when it should gain access to BlackBerry corporate-email and other services and whether it would take the drastic measure of shutting down services that aren’t compliant. Indian media reports have said the government has told Indian telecom operators to submit plans by March 31 showing how they would accommodate security agencies’ demands. But the government has made no announcement to that effect.

Mr. Crow said he is optimistic that India’s telecom ministry, which is beginning to assert more authority on the matter, will have a better understanding of the technological constraints RIM faces and will find a solution to the issue that doesn’t require BlackBerry to compromise user privacy. A telecom-ministry spokesman declined to comment.

But Mr. Crow said he expects talks with India to drag on, given the inherent delays in the country’s democracy and the lack of well-defined regulations on data protection and privacy.

“I think this may well go on and on in India, and frankly it will be one of those factors that people talk about in the Indian business environment—not one that will be seen in India’s favor in international comparison,” Mr. Crow said.

BlackBerry, which touts the highly secure nature of its email service as a key selling point globally, has faced intensifying demands from foreign governments for access to the service in recent months. The stakes in India are especially high, given that the country has more than 770 million wireless subscribers who are just beginning to shift from ordinary phones to smartphones such as BlackBerrys.

Mr. Crow said he has proposed ways for Indian intelligence and security agencies to advance investigations without gaining access to the actual content of encrypted BlackBerry email messages. He said telecom operators can glean so-called meta data about messages, such as the time messages were sent, and the corporate-email server they went through.

“If that pattern of communications were known to the authorities on lawful grounds,” Mr. Crow said, “then the authorities would be in a position to go to the correct corporate entity that owns the server” and pursue their investigation of a suspect.

In January, RIM resolved India’s security concerns with the BlackBerry Messenger chat service, which uses a lower level of encryption than corporate email. The company gave Indian telecom operators a system that lets them key in a suspect’s phone number and get unscrambled versions of Messenger chats, when a legal order has been provided, Mr. Crow said.

Mr. Crow said RIM is “kicking the tires” on potential plans to expand in India, where it already has a data center and where about 11,000 software developers are making programs to run on BlackBerrys. One possibility down the line is for India to manufacture some of the several thousand parts that go into a BlackBerry.

“There’s a heck of a lot of demand [for BlackBerrys] within three to four hours flight of most of the manufacturing places in India, including India itself,” he said.

RIM: Not Pressed to Filter Content in India

By Kee

Flickr Creative Commons | Honou

by R. Jai Krishna | The Wall Street Journal | January 11, 2011

NEW DELHI— Research In Motion Ltd. Tuesday said it hasn’t received any request from the Indian government or its agencies to filter Internet-accessed content on its BlackBerry smart phones.

RIM’s comments, in an email to Dow Jones Newswires, follow its announcement Monday that it would implement Internet content filtering in Indonesia “as soon as possible.”

That decision came after a minister threatened to shut down BlackBerry services if the Canadian company failed to block websites containing pornography. According to a RIM executive in Indonesia, it will be the first time the company applies Internet filtering in any country.

RIM has come under pressure from the Indian government to provide access to data on its secure networks. India wants to monitor RIM’s corporate email and messenger services, fearing BlackBerry’s heavy encryption makes the services convenient for terrorists to use without being monitored.

In a statement on Jan. 6, RIM said its ongoing talks with the Indian government for allowing monitoring of its BlackBerry services are “on track.”

Google, Skype targeted in India security crackdown

By Tsering

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 By Erika Kinetz | Associated Press | September 2, 2010

MUMBAI, India — India has widened its security crackdown, asking all companies that provide encrypted communications — not just BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion — to install servers in the country to make it easier for the government to obtain users’ data. That would likely affect digital giants like Google and Skype.

“People who operate communication services in India should (install a) server in India as well as make available access to law enforcement agencies,” Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told reporters. “That has been made clear to RIM of BlackBerry but also to other companies.”

On Monday, India withdrew a threat to ban BlackBerry service for at least two more months after RIM agreed to give security officials “lawful access” to encrypted data.

Indian officials have for some time also been concerned about Google and Skype, neither of which maintains servers in India. Google has an Indian unit, but Gmail is offered by Google Inc., a U.S. company subject to U.S. laws. Luxembourg-based Skype has no India operations.

India began a sweeping information security review after the November 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, which was coordinated with cell phones, satellite phones and Internet calls. Officials are also eager to avoid any trouble at the Commonwealth Games, a major sporting event to be held in New Delhi in October.

At the same time, India seems to be gaining confidence in its own attractiveness as a market, taking a tougher stance with international companies, not just in telecommunications — where it is the world’s fastest-growing major market — but also in mining and nuclear energy.

“Our stand is firm. We look forward to get access to data,” Home Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters. “There is no uncertainty over it.”

The U.N. technology chief expressed support for the Indian demand on Thursday. Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, told The Associated Press in an interview that officials fighting terrorism had the right to demand access to users’ information.

RIM maintains that the geographic location of a server has no bearing on a government’s ability to crack encrypted data.

But placing a server in India does allow the government to access user content more easily, using Indian laws, rather than waiting for the cooperation of a foreign company or security agency, Indian experts say.

“The moment you will be in Indian land, you will be able to be controlled by the government’s ruling,” said Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers Association of India. “National security is supreme over privacy.”

He said there have been conflicts over data access in the past.

“Right now the server is located outside India. And despite our best efforts to require them to access data, they say we are not governed by your system, we will not be providing it to you,” Chharia said.

He said the government wants everyone — including RIM, Skype, Google, Nokia and MSN Hotmail — to give Indian security agencies more access to their user content.

Skype, Google and Microsoft all said Thursday they’ve yet to receive any notification from the Indian government.

Nokia has already agreed to place a server in India by Nov. 5.

The government says BlackBerry is exploring the possibility of installing a server in India, as part of ongoing negotiations that narrowly avoided a ban on its services on Aug. 31.

One possible compromise could be to set up a BlackBerry Messenger server in India for instant messaging, but keep key corporate enterprise e-mail servers abroad. BlackBerry is eager to convince corporate users that its enterprise e-mail will remain the gold standard for security, despite pressure from governments in Asia and the Middle East, which fear super-encrypted communications could be abused by militants.

Pankaj Mohindroo, president of the Indian Cellular Association, whose members include Nokia and Motorola, said Indian telecom laws are ambiguous, but can be interpreted to mean that all service providers must place servers in India.

He added that users should have faith the Indian government won’t abuse its privileges.

“Interception here is done after clearance by high levels,” he said. “Consumers should never worry some junior police officer is snooping their data. It’s rarely done, and it’s done with very good purpose.”

Looming behind the fight is a sense that India wants the same level of access granted other countries like China.

Google India spokeswoman Paroma Roy Chowdhury said Google does provide user content to law enforcement agencies, but only in exceptional circumstances. All requests are reviewed by an internal committee at Google, she said.

“There have been requests from law enforcement agencies,” she said. “These are reviewed on a strictly case-by-case basis. Only in exceptional circumstances — when there is a threat of large-scale human loss, like a bomb threat — is the content made available.”

According to Google’s website, India made 1,061 requests for user data in the second half of 2009, the most after Brazil, the U.S. and Britain. It did not disclose numbers from China because “Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets.”

Google did not disclose how many requests were granted.

Skype spokeswoman Eunice Lim said by e-mail from Singapore that the company “cooperates with law enforcement agencies as much as is legally possible.”

Skype uses local servers in China and has said on its blog that chat messages into and out of China may be monitored and stored by local authorities. In places like China — where it works with a local partner, Tom Online Inc., and distributes modified Skype software — it complies with local, rather than Luxembourg, law in making data available to security agencies.

“This means there is a possibility that your communications and personal data could be stored, monitored, or blocked and made available to authorized local parties, for instance law enforcement, subject to the local legal standards,” Skype says on its website.

In 2008, a Canadian researcher discovered that the Chinese version of Skype communications software was snooping on text chats that contained certain keywords, including “democracy.”

However, Skype voice calls between computers are encrypted, much like BlackBerry e-mails, and it’s not clear what access law enforcement would gain even if Skype placed a server in India.

Associated Press writer Raphael Satter contributed to this report from London.

RIM headache grows as govts seek BlackBerry access

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Honou

By Yara Bayoumy | Reuters | August 5, 2010

BEIRUT, Aug 5 (Reuters) – BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd (RIM.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) on Thursday faced more demands to open up its smartphones to government scrutiny as Lebanon joined India, Saudi Arabia and the UAE in raising concerns over security.

RIM’s co-CEO Michael Lazaridis fought back in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, accusing foreign officials of picking on smartphones to score political points.

“This is about the Internet,” Lazaridis was quoted as saying in the Journal interview. “Everything on the Internet is encrypted. This is not a BlackBerry-only issue. If they can’t deal with the Internet, they should shut it off.”

Shares of RIM fell nearly 2 percent in trading on the Nasdaq and Toronto stock exchange. The stock has lost about 8 percent of its value since the United Arab Emirates threatened over the weekend to ban BlackBerry email, messaging and Internet services after three years of negotiations with RIM over access to encrypted user data.

The BlackBerry also faces a potential ban in Saudi Arabia as early as Friday if RIM is unable to reach a compromise there. RIM and Saudi officials met on Thursday ahead of the pending ban.

Lebanon raised concerns over the smartphone on Thursday, saying it was studying security concerns related to the BlackBerry and would begin talks with RIM.

Media reports earlier had said that Indonesia was also pressing on RIM to allow monitoring of BlackBerry data, though the country’s communications minister said it was not banning the service.

India, worried that BlackBerry’s highly secure messaging services could be misused by militants, has demanded more access for its security agencies, and the country’s telecoms minister said it had not yet reached an agreement with the company.

The Indian government may block the BlackBerry messenger service but allow emails and voicemails if a solution is not reached, the Times of India said on Thursday, citing unnamed sources.

A broadening stand-off with global governments could hurt sentiment on RIM on Wall Street, which had initially been reassured that a ban by the Gulf states would affect a tiny portion of the BlackBerry’s more than 41 million subscribers.

Lazaridis acknowledged the company was in discussions with various governments, and said the issue will likely get resolved.

RIM has said BlackBerry security is based on a system where customers create their own key and the company neither has a master key nor any “back door” to enable RIM or third parties to gain access to crucial corporate data.

The company said Wednesday it has never provided anything unique to the government of one country and cannot accommodate any request for a copy of a customer’s encryption key. (Additional reporting by Souhail Karam, Writing by Ritsuko Ando in New York, Editing by Tiffany Wu, Dave Zimmerman)

India: From Stone Pelting In Kashmir Streets To Facebook Protests

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Tanvir Kohli

By Rezwan | Global Voices Online | July 18, 2010

The beautiful Kashmir Region is marred with territorial conflicts between India, Pakistan and China since the British colonial rulers left India in 1947. Amidst a few wars all these countries have made claims to different parts of Kashmir, based on historical developments and religious affiliations of the Kashmiri people.

The Jammu and Kashmir region is administered by India but enjoys special autonomy under Article 370 of the Constitution of India. It is also the only Indian state that has its own flag. Since the late 1980s a violent uprising backed by Pakistan has caused a prolonged, bloody conflict between militants and the Indian security forces in this region. The Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir has been given special powers via Armed Forces Act, which has been widely criticized.Kashmir is boiling over tension and rage since early June when it was revealed that Indian security forces allegedly killed three innocent boys and claimed they were militants. Violent protests ensued which brought part of the region in standstill and hundreds of Kashmiri youths were arrested. Jason Oberdorf at Global Post explains the recent volatile situation in Jammu and Kashmir:

Late Tuesday (July 6, 2010) night, New Delhi deployed the army to quell protests in Kashmir for the first time since 1990, after police bullets allegedly killed three more civilians, bringing the total for the month to 15. [..]

Facebook and other social networking sites are brimming with outpourings of rage, bordering on hatred for India’s security forces, from Kashmiri youth.

Reading reports about Kashmir may get tricky depending on the source. While a Pakistani media would interpret the stone pelting protests with headlines such as “Kashmir shuts down protesting Indian occupation: Want freedom, Pakistan“, an Indian media would label the stone pelting as provocations by anti-national elements. There are reports that the Indian media may be allegedly fabricating blames.Apart from tackling the stone throwing protesters the Indian military now faces a new form of insurgency. Protesters are increasingly using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, hi5, Orkut and Kashmir Friend, which is a social network dedicated to the people of Kashmir. Simantik Dowerah at Live Mint reports that “there are actually groups of Kashmiri stone throwers who have registered themselves on Facebook.” The Kashmir reports with screenshots how the youths are being instigated by sharing Jihadi videos.As the violence escalated, the Jammu and Kashmir Government banned the SMS service across the valley in an attempt to stop the flow of information and rumors. But the Kashmiris could breathe free, stay connected and share information via Facebook as Hindustan Times reported. Many news websites like Kashmir Dispatch and Kashmir are using Facebook to reach netizens.

Amidst all this there are reports that Facebook users are being screened by Police. The Daily Rising Kashmir reports that the authorities have now started scrutinizing Facebook users in South Kashmir’s Anantnag (previously Islamabad) district who they claim are ‘instigating’ people against the state.Sagar From Srinagar writes in protest in his blog “Tragedy Of Errors: My Kashmir”, which sums up the pain of the Kashmiris:

I protest for the incompetency of the people handling my future, I protest for the lack of humanity in our (in)security forces, I Protest for the repeated insults, I protest for media using my pain for their TRPs, I protest for the short sightedness of all our leaders, I protest for none of them coming out submissively and asking for forgiveness, I protest for being ordered to be locked up in my house for no fault of mine, I protest for anyone, but never a Kashmiri, getting his 5 minutes of fame on tv, I protest for the unnecessary and insensitive comments made about my place, I protest for journalists telling the world just one side of the story…

Being Cynical at Desicritics blames the policies and politics as a reason for the protests:

Traditionally Kashmiris feel alienated- thanks to our policies and our politician’s attitude to keep the Kashmir topic alive for their own gain. If you look at the video footage, it is really disturbing to see teenagers barely in their twenties are hurling stones at the security forces. On a micro analysis you would realize that these are the same guys who would have born when Kashmir was at peak of it’s boiling point and their whole life till now has gone through violence, atrocities, negligence, no governance and of course the terrorists. [..]

I am sure the majority of these teenagers who are seen protesting violently might not be knowing for what they are protesting or on whom they are pelting stones.Some analysts are labeling these protests as the ‘new Intifada’. Arjimand Hussain Talib at Dateline Srinagar opines about the protests of Kashmiri youths:

Their movement will not die down because this generation is dynamic – stretches across the globe. It has technology at its hand – Internet, mobiles phones, digital cameras, You Tube, Facebook, etc. They are archiving Kashmir’s current happenings for the next generation. And are disseminating that to the world beyond to catch attention.

There are reports that the local government is trying to control the flow of information by shutting down publications and confiscating newspapers prior to distribution. Journalists are being barred from reporting on demonstrations. The world will rely on Facebook and Twitter users for first hand reports from the region. But after the SMS ban will the Jammu and Kashmir government crack down on Social networks too?