RIM to Indian Government: 'Talk to the Hand'

In a turn of events today, RIM has decided to NOT allow the Indian Government backdoor access to their enterprise email system. RIM has notified the Indian government today, so it should be interesting to see what the exact fallout is at this point. Good on RIM for standing up for themselves.

RIM noted that the BlackBerry email system is designed to exclude any kind of third party access. Users have complete access to the email system, and RIM does not have a master key to intercept emails to provide a backdoor... The result therefore is that RIM will be unable to fulfill the Indian Governments repeated requests to provide access to customer's email systems for monitoring purposes. My guess is the Indian Government is royally pissed at this point.

My question is... this has been going on for months... At some points RIM was reported to be complying and providing access to the Indian Govnernment. Now they turn around and say that it is not at all possible!? What's up with that?

[ via TechWhack ]