India pushes to monitor emails on Blackberry devices

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that India and Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry, are at odds over the ability for India to access corporate emails on all BlackBerry devices. RIM has given India access to the messenger service on BlackBerry, but says it is technical impossible to do so for emails.

India’s push for access to wireless communications is based on fears that heavy encryption on smart phones would allow for terrorists to use them undetected. Accessing corporate emails, RIM argues, is more difficult than accessing the messenger service as corporate emails are held on servers owned and used by corporations themselves and not a central server managed by RIM.

Robert E. Crow, RIM’s vice president for industry, government and university relations, said, "We can't give a solution for enterprise services. It's not possible to do so, because the keys of that service are with the corporate enterprises and corporate entity that owns the server."

Unfortunately, this is a no win situation for RIM or India. While the need to protect a growing country like India from terrorists in understandable, it is hard to justify by the use of surveillance. Mass surveillance of digital communications is a trick and difficult thing to do and, more importantly, it is a slippery slope. Once digital communications is completely monitored, what is stopping the India government from monitoring all individuals in India at a great expense to those to live and work there? A far better approach would be to promote a trusting and free environment in their growing economy between the government and the governed. But India will have to figure this out on their own.