RIM reportedly working with India to circumvent BlackBerry ban

Aug 13th 2010
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RIM reportedly working with India to circumvent BlackBerry ban

There were reports as late as this morning that RIM was remaining ” defiant” over the looming (and recurring) BlackBerry ban in India and not willing to cut any ” special deals,” however it seems like that isn’t be the case of course — Reuters is reporting that RIM has assured India that it’s going to provide a ” technical solution” sometime next week. That’s presumably akin to the arrangement RIM recently worked out with Saudi Arabia, but India still isn’t making any final decisions just yet, with a government source simply saying that its ” technical team will evaluate if it works.” Somewhat curiously, the source also mentioned that India had ” concerns” about Gmail and Skype, but didn’t offer any more details.

For its part, RIM has issued a customer update that outlines the four main principles that govern the capabilities it provides to carriers for ” lawful access purposes.” Head on past the break for the total statement.

In response to the statement published today by the govt of India, and additional to RIM’s Customer Update dated August 2, RIM wishes to supply this additional info to its customers. Although RIM cannot disclose confidential regulatory discussions that happen with any government, RIM assures its customers that it genuinely tries to be as cooperative as possible with governments within the spirit of supporting legal and national security requirements, while also preserving the lawful needs of citizens and companies. RIM has drawn a company line by insisting that any capabilities it provides to carriers for ” lawful” access purposes be limited by four main principles:

1. The carriers’ capabilities be limited to the strict context of lawful access and national security requirements as governed by the country’s judicial oversight and rules of law.

2. The carriers’ capabilities should be technology and vendor neutral, allowing no greater access to BlackBerry consumer services than the carriers and regulators already impose on RIM’s competitors and other similar communications technology companies.

3. No changes to the protection architecture for BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers since, contrary to any rumors, the safety architecture is similar world wide and RIM truly has no ability to supply its customers’ encryption keys. Also driving RIM’s position is the indisputable fact that strong encryption is a fundamental commercial requirement for any country to attract and maintain international business anyway and similarly strong encryption is currently used pervasively in traditional VPNs on both wired and wireless networks as a way to protect corporate and government communications.

4. RIM maintains a consistent global standard for lawful access requirements that doesn’t include special deals for specific countries.

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