RIM once again had to vehemently deny senseless reports coming from mainstream Indian media that RIM has handed over BES corporate email access to the Indian Government. Anyone who knows how BES works would know that RIM does not have the keys that the government would need to be able to read BES email. Mainly because RIM cannot hand over keys it does not have access to.
The Economic Times in India cited claims from telecom department officials and documents saying that RIM gave India access to corporate emails. This is not the first time that RIM has had to deny doing this and you would think the Indian media would get the hint. Especially since every time RIM reconfirms that not only have they not done it but they CANNOT do it.
Hopefully David Paterson, RIM’s head of government relations set the record straight (via Reuters) once and for all by stating that:
"The fact is that BlackBerry enterprise communications in India remain secure and encrypted. No change has been made or ever can be made in India or anywhere,"
Hopefully Indian officials will soon realize that this monitoring is relatively pointless since it can be circumvented by anyone willing to pay $10 a month for BES or other secure email solutions. Maybe their security model is counting on terrorists to be idiots?
