BlackBerry Battle In India Going Down To the Wire 176
crimeandpunishment writes "With just days before the deadline, BlackBerry's maker was shot down by India in its latest effort to avoid having its services cut off for about a million Indian users of the device. Research in Motion's effort to broaden the debate over data encryption were rejected. The Indian government wants access to users' emails. The head of a powerful industry group in India accused RIM of taking the wrong approach to negotiations, saying, 'It need not have escalated to this level. Folks like RIM have to understand business is done differently here.'"
Am I missing something here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, the Indian government can tell Blackberry to give up its keys for a particular encryption layer, but what is to stop people from using RSA 512-bit encryption with their e-mails? Wouldn't this force terrorists to pay attention to what encryption methods they are using?
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'm going to make a wild prediction (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, because the only alternative to instantly obeying any desire of any government is suicide.
The desired outcome is that countries like India have a choice:
1) Fail to respect the rights and the privacy of your citizens
-- or --
2) Benefit from trading with first-world nations that are more prosperous and more technologically advanced
This is perfectly acceptable unless you are prepared to argue that a principled company should be forced to do business with foreign nations against its will.
Besides, India is not RIM's only market. No longer doing business in India would mean less profit. It would not mean no profit. It is not a "corporate suicide" scenario. It's more like a scenario of "which is more important to us: our integrity, or a few more points added to our stock price?"