The continued negotiations between Research In Motion, manufacturers of the BlackBerry smartphone, and the government of India involve high stakes. For the government, an inability to intercept Blackberry?s encrypted communications is a handicap in carrying out its security functions, particularly those that relate to counter-terrorism. For BlackBerry, the situation is even more complicated. A blanket ban on key service features like Messenger and Enterprise could lose the company many clients in the world?s fastest growing telecom market. Any reported compromise with the government that involves handing the government ?keys? to encrypted communication would also push key clients, who put a premium on privacy, away from BlackBerry. The issue is a complex coalescing of a wider privacy vs security debate. And many misconceptions are floating around. For one, not all of BlackBerry?s service features are under the scanner. In fact, the usual consumer services like calls, SMS and MMS can be lawfully intercepted by the government, with cooperation from the mobile service providers, just as such communication can be intercepted for other devices. It is true that BlackBerry has built stronger firewalls for even these regular services than other device makers, but this involves scrambling, and not encryption, the latter being harder to crack.
The real problem lies with the communications that are encrypted. In its defence, BlackBerry argues that many corporate and government clients use their product precisely because of the guarantee of privacy. These are usually the institutions that sign up to the BlackBerry Enterprise system. The Enterprise system is a virtual private network (VPN) and the keys for decryption of the data lie with the clients, not the manufacturers. There is nothing illegal about VPNs and they are widely used in India?s IT industry. In fact, banning VPN?s would be very damaging to India?s IT industry. It is almost impossible for individuals to sign up for an Enterprise system because it involves the setting up of servers, and large, cool places to store them. In theory, a terrorist organisation could sign up for Enterprise, though the probability is low. BlackBerry then has the ability to assist the government in tracking down the location of the system though it claims it has no ability to give the government any ?key? to decrypt the data. For that, the government must upgrade its own technical capabilities. That all sounds fair enough, but can we really believe that the governments of US and China, two of the most paranoid, would let BlackBerry off the hook that easily? Perhaps, but only if they already possess superior decryption abilities.
