The government on Thursday said Research in Motion (RIM) — BlackBerry makers — has assured it that they would address its security concerns. It hoped that the Canadian service provider and security agencies would be on the “same page.”
“BlackBerry has assured the Ministry of Home Affairs that the issue of monitoring of the BlackBerry will be sorted out soon. I am sure we will soon be on the same page and our concerns will be addressed,'” Special Secretary (Internal Security) in the Ministry U.K. Bansal told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.
The government had told the company that if it did not allow monitoring of emails and SMS to address security concerns, it will have to close down its operations , which would spell trouble for over a million BlackBerry users in India. The government has said RIM will have to address its security-related issues by allowing a monitoring facility.
Mr. Bansal said the Department of Telecommunication was the nodal authority that made the policy and it was working to address the issue raised by the Home Ministry.
The DoT has been asked to tell the company in no uncertain terms that its emails and other data services must comply with formats that can be monitored .
Keywords: RIM, Blackberry, address concerns, internal security
The government seems to have managed to arm twist Blackberry into making their system decipherable. So, by having a decipherable system, effectively, government wants an indiscriminate right to pry on the personal data of all users. An analogous condition in the physical world would be like giving the government access to the content of all physical mail sent through the department of posts. Does the government also monitor content of 'snail mail' sent via post office?
There should be some method to this madness. May be a warrant or some permission of the sort should be sought from some Judicial/government authority before prying into an individual's private data. A little bit of transparency about this process from the government will help.
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