Blackberry services to be discontinued in India?

[IBF Member Blog Feed]

I cam across these write ups in media (1, 2, 3) which says that Blackberrys are a security threat. If so, they should be shut down with immediate effect. They are playtools for spoilt and the rich and frankly, has no adherents among the mass of mobile users. Overpriced and useless phones, the government’s decision [...]

Blackberry India: a security threat?

 

[Sushubh]

Techtree.com India > News > Telecom > DoT to Take Responsibility for Sensitive Data?

 

[gregory house]

Citizens are a security threat - to each other. Should the govt. 'shut' them down too?

 

[amish]

umm.. i think u r just putting logic less argument. there is huge difference betn (in)humanity in normal citizen and (in)humanity in terrorists or person who thinks again national security.next war wud be hi-tech war with pin-point accuracy. if u dont take steps now, to prevent leaking of locations of important sites than war wudnt last more than a day or two i.e we wud lose in a day or two.

 

[gregory house]

What I wrote was sarcastic in nature, and sarcasm is something which is supposed to present ideas in a manner which makes the original one look stupid.

How is a blackberry any different from a regular internet connection? And why should people allow the government to snoop into their emails? If my data is misused, can I sue the government? A year back, some people in Mumbai got extortion calls from the underworld which had gained access to their income tax returns through some income tax officers - in other words the government. And a few months back, Britain lost important personal details on 2.5 (or 25, don't remember) million citizens when the data was sent on cds via regular mail and never reached the destination? In such cases, national security means putting my life at risk.

There is a difference between legitimate actions and nonsensical ones. Does the government open envelopes that people drop in post boxes, or inland letters? What if terrorists use snail mail for their purposes? Or use stolen phones for communication? Should it tap every phone call, store a copy of every letter and email and listen to every conversation each citizen has so that security threats can be found and neutralized?

I am sorry to say that people do not appreciate the value of freedom. A few years in China, or communist Cuba or the erstwhile USSR will probably make a lot of them rethink their ideas on freedom, restrictions and terrorism. We are not too far from that scenario though, now that all developed countries are trying to strip their citizens of all their rights. In a couple of decades we can look forward to mandatory fingerprinting, retinal scans, dna sampling, all in the name of reducing terrorism and fighting crime. Why don't you simply put every one in jail from the very beginning - like Kansa did to Vasudev and Devaki. Na rahega baans na bajegi baansuri.

 

[blr_p]

Trying to look at commercial interest angle here. What other competitor to black berry is there ?..that could benefit from such an action.Or is it the small volume of data in comparison to the web that makes this feasible.

 

---

[gregory house]

Won't affect BlackBerry commercially. If users and corporates comply when their file their income tax returns and follow a thousand similar Byzantine regulations, they won't complain in this case too. Indian apathy towards privacy and fighting for their rights, and I would include myself in that, is well known. People will crib about it for a month and then it will be business as usual.That apart, there was a hilarious article in either the ET or TOI about this a couple of weeks back where the author was trying to explain concepts like private key and public key. The quality of tech journalism in mainstream media in India seems to be incredibly bad. Or it might just be limited to TOI and Co. Should probably get the editors and sub editors from some of the better tech mags to write such articles.

 

[icar]

Seek encryption code from others too, RIM to DoT

In yet another twist to the ongoing BlackBerry saga, RIM, the Canadian company that makes these smartphones, has told the Department of Telecom (DoT) that there are four other mobile e-mail solutions in India that use ‘comparable encryption levels’. RIM has pointed out that the DoT was targeting it, even as similar solutions were being offered by other handset majors in India including Nokia and Motorola and also by software players Microsoft and Seven Networks. “Thus, focusing on BlackBerry alone will not solve any security concerns over encryption,” RIM said in a presentation to the DoT.

RIM has been under fire from India’s home ministry, which has demanded that the Canadian company provide encryption solutions — either by providing the ‘master key’ or by setting up servers in India so that security agencies here can monitor e-mails and data sent between BlackBerry users. The DoT has also warned RIM that service providers (telcos) here would be asked to discontinue BlackBerry services unless the company provides monitoring solutions.

“In addition to BlackBerry, four other mobile e-mail solutions in market in India use comparable encryption levels — Windows Mobile ActiveSync, Nokia Intellisync, Motorola Good and Seven Networks,” RIM said, while adding: “Furthermore, several other technologies widely used in India use strong encryption to secure communications over the internet. Just a few examples include — Web browser, WAO 2.0 mobile browser software, IIPSec VPN, PGP and SMIME. All these technologies are widely available and used throughout India. Functionally, all of these solutions use encryption similar to BlackBerry. Thus, focusing on BlackBerry alone will not solve any security concerns over encryption.”

While data on RIM network flows with the 256-Advanced Encryption Standard, DoT wants the company to reduce this to a 40-bit encryption, a level that can be intercepted by security agencies. (Encryption means converting data and e-mails into algorithmic codes that travel through the network and later get decoded into the original form. Globally, the 128-bit standard is followed for all online transactions.)

RIM has warned the government of resorting to any move to reduce the encryption levels. “Encryption with key lengths of 128 bits or longer protects business communications and online transactions from hackers, thieves and other wrongdoers.

If escrowed keys ever fall into wrong hands, individual businesses and consumers would be driven away from using the internet for private, commercial and confidential communications. A similar result would follow from the dumbing down of encryption to levels that fail to offer protection,” RIM presentation added.

Additionally, RIM has also pointed out that the Indian IT and ITeS industries were ‘robust users of strong encryption as was the government of India’.

It has also said that strong encryption was the key to securing communications between clients and customers located in India and around the world and added that as per Nasscom, these companies already accounted for over 5% of the country’s GDP and contributed over $40 billion in exports.

“The industry’s growth is propelled by high degree of trust that global companies place in Indian IT and ITeS companies,” RIM added.

India has over 114,000 BlackBerry customers among five operators—Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular, BPL and Reliance Communications.




Seek encryption code from others too, RIM to DoT- Telecom-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times

 

[gregory house]

The type of cryptography used - symmetric vs. asymmetric is a major factor in determining a 'safe' key strength. Asymmetric crypto - RSA et al - generally uses keys 2048-bit and upwards while symmetric crypto - DES, AES (Rijndael) etc - can make do with keys 128-bit and upwards. Hope govt. is aware of this issue - Key size - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Okay, what if everyone agrees with the government order making the use of cryptographic keys exceeding 40-bit illegal and even then bombs keep going off? These guys are trying to solve unsolvable problems instead of concentrating their efforts on problems that they can solve. You CANNOT imprison technology. It DOESNT work. Anybody who has not left his brains at home knows that. Problem is we have too many overconfident people making decisions on subjects they have zero knowledge of. Bedagark!

 

[blr_p]

“In addition to BlackBerry, four other mobile e-mail solutions in market in India use comparable encryption levels —
Windows Mobile ActiveSync,
Nokia Intellisync,
Motorola Good and
Seven Networks,”

RIM said,

So does that mean these 4 have provided masterkeys or set up servers so DoT may 'snoop' as it chooses

I'm still not 'getting' why RIM is the odd one out here.