Fwd: [bangla-vision] De-encrypting hypocrisy of BlackBerry issue

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Habib Yousafzai <habibyousafzai@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 3:04 AM
Subject: [bangla-vision] De-encrypting hypocrisy of BlackBerry issue

 

De-encrypting hypocrisy of BlackBerry issue

Haroon Siddiqui

About BlackBerry's battles abroad, I didn't understand much except this: Just as Stockwell Day will build prisons for criminals he cannot find, Research in Motion will give foreign governments the data tools it said it didn't have, allowing them to snoop on their citizens.

So I phoned around to ask about the politics of instant messaging, emailing, Web browsing, etc.

I did not pretend to have understood the jargon encrypting the issue and asked some experts many dumb questions.

The first thing I learned was that while Day is dealing in phantoms, RIM is not. The warfare over its technology is for real.

But it's not all about prudish Saudis stopping young men and women flirting via messaging. Or the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Algeria, India, Indonesia and Algeria failing to grasp "the reality of the Internet," as Mike Lazaridis, RIM's co-CEO, said. They understand it all too well.

Nor is it true, as he said, that "a lot of those people don't have Ph.D.s, and they don't have a degree in computer science." They do. They are far more educated than he, a college dropout.

Nor is this issue about RIM and its backers, the U.S. and Canada, being on the side of angels, while the Arabs, Indians and Indonesians are dancing with the devil.

This is about those states wanting to eavesdrop the way our governments do.

And it's about money — the need for RIM to expand in the biggest growing markets by walking the tightrope between what it must do to satisfy the governments there and keep its brand.

The rest is technical gobbledygook.

RIM is Canada's flagship high-tech company. Its security features are the envy of competitors — it scrambles data and routes it on its own electronic highway before descrambling it at the other end.

In resisting the demands of foreign governments to listen in on the traffic, RIM says it won't compromise. It denies having made any special deals with any other countries to give access.

The deniability is Nixonian — he didn't lie but didn't tell the whole truth, either.

The company won't sacrifice the security of its corporate clients (who pay a stiff fee to ensure greater confidentiality). But it doesn't say that about individual customers, the client base that governments are mostly after to track down potential terrorists.

We have not heard, for example, that the U.S. National Security Agency or the Canadian Communications Security Establishment (that monitors phones and emails) have had any trouble accessing BlackBerry's traffic.

RIM says it works within the regulations of the country it operates in. It'll obey a court order or a warrant for a lawful intercept.

But court orders aren't at all difficult to get in the U.S. They are broad to boot, allowing dragnet surveillance between the U.S. and any part of the world. Under one court order, intelligence agencies can tap into millions of pieces of communications.

India, in fact, has a law making it legal for government to intercept any computer communication without a court order. So in acquiescing to India's request, RIM, or any other company, would be well within the law of that jurisdiction.

Also, RIM may subcontract work abroad to local telecoms. They, in turn, might let governments snoop in. That may be the case in Russia and China, though RIM won't say, as it won't divulge its new deal with Saudi Arabia.

Even with corporate clients, RIM may give the tools to "monitor and archive everything that happens on the BlackBerrys they own ... and governments could easily demand access from those companies," reports The New York Times. It quotes an expert as saying. "RIM could be technically correct that they are not giving up anything." (emphasis mine)

Much of this is shrouded in corporate secrecy. Ironic, since the battle is being waged in the name of free speech on the Internet.

We must keep pressing for such freedom, especially given its indisputable role in the battle for human rights in authoritarian regimes, as in Iran. Hillary Clinton has been promoting such freedoms, even while conceding governments' security needs.

But she presumably would make security concessions for allies Saudi Arabia, UAE and India but not others. However, human rights activists would draw the line differently.

Canada, under Stephen Harper, has no position whatsoever. Trade Minister Peter Van Loan is arguing RIM's case as a duty to a big Canadian business but has little to say on freedom and human rights.

We are witnessing a war in cyberspace, where everyone is looking out for their interests. The moral posturing is just that, posturing.

__._,_.___

Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/