US President Bush is on his way to China for the Olympics beginning Friday, and staffers accompanying him will be without BlackBerrys for the duration due to security concerns. Wow, top-shelf bureaucrats without BlackBerrys? That’s going to be rough for them. To be fair, Chinese hotels have been forced by the local government to install spy software which will monitor guests’ internet usage, which puts wireless monitoring not that far-fetched. Is the presidential staff justified in leaving their BlackBerrys at home, or is this just the Chinese version of the Patriot Act? One way or the other, the Hong Kong BlackBerry 9000 launch wasn’t too long ago, so there may very well be a few Bolds floating through the crowds at the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing before the show’s over.
Tag: governmentPage 2 of 4
Better double-check your BlackBerry before making that weekend trip across the border, as now Homeland Security can detain laptops, mobiles and recordable media of all types for an unspecified amount of time as part of routine inspections. Any information gleaned from the media can be shared around government agencies as needed for decryption and translation, although original copies must be destroyed when if the media is returned. Throw your BlackBerry into checked luggage, because otherwise you could be losing it for months on end, even if you’re a returning US citizen and you aren’t under any particular suspicion.
“They’re saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler’s laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies “don’t establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched.”
As a Canadian who often has to fly through the US with my laptop, I don’t like sound of this one bit. Of course, there are some solid tips out there for deterring complete invasion of privacy, including using virtual private networks in order to keep data accessible but not on your person; looks like we’re all going to have to sign up with WICKSoft. To get the full details, you can read the whole report here.
(via WindowsMobile Cool)
It looks like the Indian government is still not satisfied with the BlackBerry security, situation. RIM, the Department of Telecom, and the Home Ministry are getting together to butt heads on how to resolve things, with talks supervised by the National Security Adviser, but considering the BlackBerry 8330 launch earlier this week, I reckon the government has let service continue while they try to figure the whole mess out. The most popular solution remains to set up servers in India.
“We are insisting for a (BlackBerry) server in India to take care of security agencies concern. But technically and commercially what will be the impact on the Blackberry also has to be taken into consideration and it is being taken.”
Do we have any Indian readers out there who have been caught in the crossfire?
(via IndiaTimes)
Wait, what? After all this trouble, the Indian government is actually claiming “There is no threat from Blackberry services, … There is no permission needed for starting value added services. We have not given permission to anybody, we have not disallowed anybody”. It seems as though as soon as the Department of Telecom found out about the potential security breach due to inability to crack the 128-bit-encrypted BlackBerry messages, internal security agencies got nervous and locked everything down, while the DoT still wanted to continue allowing BlackBerry service. You might remember some of the earlier statements which pointed to an optimistic resolution of the whole mess, while State Affairs imposed restrictions on BlackBerry service at the same time. Regardless, last we heard, the Indian governement was going to handle all necessary decryption – it’s just really strange to hear that it was never really needed.
The illustrious Mr. Douglas Soltys graces us with his presence this episode, as we run down the week’s news…
- BlackBerry Cool Podcast: Get Connected Fairly Act: Ottawa Member of Parliament David McGuinty is heading up an act which could completely clean up Canadian wireless fees.
- RIM doubles revenue on Q1 report, shareholders visibly deflate: Revenues of $2.24 billion fail to impress analysts this quarter, but just you wait until the Bold launches…
- AT&T BlackBerry Bold delayed until mid-August?: Wow, Canada’s getting the Bold first? Woo!
- OS 4.5 for BlackBerry 8330 making the rounds: OS 4.5 is packing HTML e-mail viewing and a bunch of other goodies that CDMA users may want to try out…
- BlackBerry JDE 4.5 goes public: The latest BlackBerry JDE offers Maps integration… maybe some cool new apps to come out of that…
- BIS 2.5 upgrade coming June 28th, with HTML e-mail?: A BIS upgrade scheduled for this weekend should give U.S. subscribers long-anticipated HTML email support.
- BlackBerry Desktop Manager 4.5 hits the streets: RIM releases BlackBerry Desktop Manager 4.5. Key features: it no longer looks like a Windows 95 application.
- BerryBUDDY and OtterBox reviews updated: The BlackBerry Curve and Pearl both have had some changes over the last little while… let’s see how the accessories keep up.
- Review: SugarSync: There are a lot of different places where you can keep your files these days – SugarSync can keep ‘em all together.
- Weekly Contest: How Would You Regulate Carrier Power?: BlackBerry Cool is giving you the power to fight carriers — how will you use it? Post a comment and win a free SugarSync subscription and a BBCool tee shirt.
All MP3 and no iTunes makes RSS a dull boy.
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I was going to sit on this one until next week’s podcast, but it was just too good to hold out on. Member of Parliament David McGuinty is heading up a little something called Bill C-555 (a.k.a the Get Connected Fairly Act), which is aiming to eliminate extraneous wireless costs like data overages and system access fees for Canadian consumers and enterprises in the hopes of increasing adoption and overall quality of life. Best part of all? He wants all Canadian mobiles to be unlocked. A noble cause indeed, and one that BBCool is most certainly behind. If you’ve got 13 minutes, it’s always awesome to hear about the Canadian wireless landscape sucking just a little bit less. Go ahead and learn more about Bill C-555 and even sign the petition if you’re north of the border. Fight for your right to MP3, rock the iTunes vote, and viva la RSS.
Although the Indian government’s ability to only decode 40-bit encryption has caused some serious headaches for RIM and carriers over the last couple of months, it sounds like they’re on the way to being able to handle 256-bit standards. BlackBerry messages go through the pipes at 128-bit, which means if the National Security Advisor follows through, standard service will resume. As for the decoding itself, there’s still a lot of talk about outsourcing to third parties, and it’s presumed that the government wouldn’t raise the encryption bar unless they had some way of getting into transmissions.
(via The Economic Times)
There’s been significant beating around the bush and looking for alternative solutions, but after talks this week, the Indian Department of Telecom has flat-out demanded RIM provide full encryption codes to BlackBerry transmissions, or they’ll pull the devices from the country. Pretty harsh, but this whole thing has been going on for awhile now, and I could see why the government wants an immediate solution so it doesn’t drag on any longer. RIM cemented their opposition earlier this week, so things are looking pretty grim yet again.
Just when you think things are getting better over there, the BlackBerry troubles in India just flare right up again. Last time we checked in, the government had agreed with RIM to split up access keys so neither party had universal access to BlackBerry data – now it sounds like the Department of Telecom was sniffing for a master key to access all data, a request which RIM promptly shot down. The opportunity to set up servers abroad remains unresolved, but is still a solution with lots of potential for other Asian markets in the neighbourhood, after all, wouldn’t it improve service speeds and reduce congestion at RIM’s servers in Waterloo?
After all the harassing the government has done to get Indian carriers or RIM to help them get a lock on BlackBerry communications, they’ve conceded that they might have trouble decrypting anything using a 40-bit standard or higher. BlackBerrys use a 128-bit standard (AES), putting it and plenty of other devices such as satellite phones, outside of their reach. Setting up servers abroad remains an option for RIM, but at this point, India’s entire internal security could see an overhaul before that even becomes a possibility. The Department of Telecom has requested carriers scale back their security to a 40-bit standard, but that pull-back has been slowed by existing infrastructures running at 128. When it comes to stuff like this, I’ll agree with the Canadian government – if the media learns about stuff like this, it really does become a security hazard.
