Some email users know that every word they typed is being monitored, but they are usually employees that are sending emails through their company’s servers. In the rest of the world, citizens living under dictatorships also know that they need to be careful about what information they transmit over the web. Research In Motion is the service provider for Blackberry Messenger, and in India the government wants access to everything that is transmitted. Other countries are following suit, and all cite security reasons as their justification for intruding into the personal lives of their citizens. If it was as simple as monitoring all emails and messages then terrorist attacks could be stopped before they were carried out. At least this is what the Indian government is saying about encrypted Blackberry messages.
While Research In Motion originally promised to comply with the Indian government’s demands by January 31st of this year, they have come back and reneged on their promises because they say that they cannot put their business customers at risk. Businesses all over the world are super paranoid about who has access to email exchanges and sensitive documents. All it would take is for one of these messages to get into the wrong hands and multi-billion dollar companies could be at risk. The Indian government has threatened to block all users from getting access to these services if Research In Motion fails to comply. No one knows if either party is bluffing, but customers in India will be out of luck if they can no longer use Blackberry Messenger to communicate.
