BlackBerry In India: Another Government Struggling With Technology?
The recent BlackBerry security concerns raised by Indian Govt have been reported widely in press. To me it seems that governments around the world are struggling with controlling technology. Just a few weeks ago Pakistan made the headlines when PTCL inadvertently caused the youtube outage. Some wondered if the BlackBerry problems could spill over to Pakistan. I remember reading at TGP that security was the reason for the delay in introducing BB services in Pakistan … so hopefully we are past this obstacle.
Obviously the old-school bureaucracies have a hard time keeping up with the fast pace of technology. It seems that one fine day the Indian government realized that there’s a threat, reacted hastily and scared the market! To be fair, most government agencies tend to work in that mode.
Excerpt from WSJ:
Indian telecommunications operators are negotiating with the government on a framework for BlackBerry usage that will allow the Indian market to expand but also meet concerns for national security.
India’s government isn’t comfortable with the way information transmitted via BlackBerry is encrypted because it’s too complex to be monitored, according to one industry official. The fear is that information can’t be monitored and that this could be a security risk.
These worries had caused some to speculate that India’s government might opt to block BlackBerry messages. But India’s telecommunications secretary Siddhartha Behura downplayed the prospect, saying Friday that “there is no question of banning at this point,” according to Reuters. He said the government is talking to telecom operators and to BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion Ltd. of Canada.
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Babar - You have pointed out correctly “To be fair, most government agencies tend to work in that mode.” The same problem exists in Pakistan. This is not the one for use to get secured but infact this is a misuse tool kept by the agencies to tap into various activities of the officers and politicians, lawerys etc. Government should name 1-Single-ONO attack prevented by this sort of intercept before it happened? Almost daily blasts, kidnapping, street snatching all of it gets corrdinated off cellular handsets and how many get traced before crime? None. The street crime graph went at its peak during the Musharaf tenure, mobile mafia came into existance and with it killings, and the center issue “Kidnappings” and all of this again used to get operated by listening to those same calls not to protect innocent citizens but to protect Musharaf and his flith bag of southeren aides. In a country where your “Personal Communication” is not secure, isn’t it a destruction path? when the world is moving to make personal communication more secure so it should remain personal. Whats the use of introducing initiatives like making media free in a country where your people aren’t free to communicate, talk email?