To avoid Indian ban, BlackBerry maker allows govt. access to encrypted messages

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100831/blackberry-research-in-motion-ban

by SolInvictus • 16 years ago

54 51 16 years ago

todayiamme7• 16 years ago

Note: This isn't supposed to be a political comment. I don't like politics and I don't want to indulge in it neither am I interested in patriotism and other such things. What I do care about is the suffering of human beings and finding solutions for their problems. This comment is such an observation of a pressing problem I see around me.

----

This is precisely why I don't want to stay in India beyond a certain point. This isn't just something about privacy, but it's the symptom of a cancer that's spreading through the system. That might sound like a sweeping statement, but it isn't. The Indian state is slowly disintegrating due to the cause and effect caused by decades of corruption (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India ) and growing discontent.

As of now in India there are Kashmir separatists to the north who want to overthrow direct rule of the Indian state after decades of conflict and the rise of oppressive practices by the Indian state (see: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,HRW,,PAK,,3ae6a8558,0... ). I see stories like these ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7973499...) depressingly often in the news. These people are want a solution and they are willing to spill blood for it.

In the south there is a growing communist insurgency consisting of impoverished people who have been long denied their rights and have taken up arms in protest (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite-Maoist_insurgency ). The interesting thing is that these groups have entrenched their power by acting like an ad-hoc government collecting taxes, dispensing justice and winning the confidence of the villagers through goodwill schemes that the government should have implemented.

What fuels it is the fact that outside the metros there is no visible infrastructure development and government functioning is reduced to the distribution of voter cards. Most people attribute this to a lack of resources, but that isn't quite true. More than $ 125 mil. are spent on creating rural health centers yearly and budgets are allocated based upon need by bureaucrats with little or no accountability to the people there are supposed to serve [disclaimer: my mother is such a bureaucrat and I read her files at times]. However, no one knows what's going on "over there" on the ground and recent reports aren't too encouraging. In fact, it's treated as a fact that most of the allocated money is swished off into a few pockets through a network of scams that often prey upon the illiterate.

Anecdotally, I know of villages just a few hours outside New Delhi in which ingenious scams take place. For example, the state has promised food and ration for school going children with uniforms. So, what happens on the ground is that a few officials come together and sell the provisions on the open market and buy substandard food instead. This wouldn't be bad if it weren't for the fact that the education system in the villages is so broken that many of it's graduate are still effectively illiterate. In fact, the teachers themselves under new schemes are often high school graduates who have been taught under the same system.

The list goes on and on, but the trend in general is that these "facts of indian life" come together to form a potent environment which ferments chaos. What will emerge out of this chaos is something that no one can predict, but what is certain that India won't have a congenial atmosphere necessary for stability and wealth creation (wealth over here means things that matter, not money). What is far more disturbing is that few are willing to even look at the problem let alone start developing solutions for it.

tl;dr: Basically, the odds aren't on the PR guys side.

known2• 16 years ago

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." --Oscar Wilde

shabda• 16 years ago

> but it's the symptom of a cancer that's spreading through the system. That might sound like a sweeping statement, but it isn't. The Indian state is slowly disintegrating due to the cause and effect caused by decades of corruption

By almost all metrics we have made great strides in raising the standard of Indian peoples lives in last 50-30-10 years.

1. Literacy.

http://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://indiaimage.nic....

2. Life expectancy

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le...

3. Child Mortality

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sh_dyn_mo...

About the wikipedia links you posted, you would be hard pressed to find Countries without problems, let alone a country with India's size.

> bureaucrats with little or no accountability to the people there are supposed to serve [disclaimer: my mother is such a bureaucrat and I read her files at times]. However, no one knows what's going on "over there" on the ground and recent reports aren't too encouraging.

> Anecdotally, I know of villages just a few hours outside New Delhi in whi ..

Your statements are too sweeping and repeat broad generalization without having any first hand experience.

tl;dr: India has many problems, but saying "The Indian state is slowly disintegrating" is way far from truth.

desigooner• 16 years ago

One would be hard pressed to find a country of these many people and this size without any issues of its own. The grass is always greener on the other side and it's really easy to proclaim something as dramatic as "The Indian State is slowly disintegrating" .. Yeah of course there is poverty and corruption and bureaucracy and what not .. but the situation is not as bad as the commentor potrays it to be. As shabda says, the situation is certainly improving, be it infrastructure or standard of living in terms of factors such as literacy, female infanticide, child mortality, access to better medical facilities, and so on and so forth.

todayiamme7• 16 years ago

I firmly disagree. Those statistics are skewed and flawed in more than a few ways, because you see they reference themselves most of the times. Whenever, I analyze anything I can't go about referencing my own system's output as proof that my system works. I need to set up independent checks and balances to make sure that the output matches the tolerances I want. Beyond, the Indian census they don't have an independent data source to collaborate their claims, which is a logical fallacy I can't buy.

Let us analyze literacy;

The literacy statistics once you go into the document are counted by the number of graduates from this system, but in the system itself, more specifically, in the rural areas degrees can be bought and large scale cheating takes place. This isn't recycled third hand estimates, but the reality that even those who design the schemes know. Further, independent checks and analysis has not been undertaken to find out the validity of the statistics.

One of the most glaring examples of this are the educational institutions they have cited. Most of these institutions in rural areas exist only on paper and their funds are often mis-allocated by corrupt individuals. Obviously, there are no verifiable statistics available for this, but based upon ground reports from individuals and officers it's shockingly common.

If you actually see the data then you see a stagnation that has set in since the survey you cited (1998) and the 2001 Census. One of the interesting leaps was made between 1951 and 1997; the literacy rate increased from 18.3% in 1951 to 62% in 1997. This implies that an average increase of .95% in literacy was experienced by the population. Yet the 2001 census showed slowing down of the trend and over 3 years the literacy rate increased only by 2.84%.

It might seem like nothing but when aggregated over the large indian population then the numbers add up. However, it could be argued that this was just a minute deviation in the norm based upon outside factors beyond their control. The only way we can conclude this is when the results of 2010 Census comes out, but I would like to cite the report itself since it basically makes the same point;

>>> In 1942, the British Government instituted the Sargent Committee to propose a plan for eradicating illiteracy in India. The committee proposed a plan that would make India 100 % literate in 40 years. Indian nationalists scoffed at the plan stating that India does not have that kind of patience, and wanted quicker results. However, 58 years after that and 53 years after independence, our literacy rate is only 62 %. <<<

>>>The National Policy on Education (NPE), framed in 1986 and amended in 1992, accords priority to universalisation of elementary education, universal retention of children up to 14 years of age, non-formal education in the educationally backward states and thrust to the National Literacy Mission.

It states that " the investment on education be gradually increased to reach a level of 6% of the National Income as early as possible". In fact, several Government documents dating back to 1969 state this goal. The actual level of investment has remained far short of this target.

The Programme of Action of the NPE 1986 and as revised in 1992 states "Time is of essence, and unless we act now, we stand in the danger of once again missing the opportunity of education reform, so critical not only for the development of our nation, but for our very survival". It also mentions that "it is people’s achievement in the education reconstruction which will make the real difference"

We have not yet succeeded in any meaningful reform and also having society’s involvement in the process.<<<

The summary is quite interesting;

>>>To sum up, India’s education system is highly skewed. India has excellent examples of institutions at all levels of education to demonstrate its capability. Some higher education institutions like IITs and IIMs have earned international acclaim.

But below this elite crust there is not much to speak of and the road ahead is challenging.<<<

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The point I am trying to make is that if you define state disintegration as failure of the machinery of the government, then India isn't exactly in a healthy state no matter how you cut it. This isn't something about picking problems. It's about analyzing them and figuring out ways to solve it. However, before you can solve any problem you need to analyze it and this is precisely what I am doing.

>>>Your statements are too sweeping and repeat broad generalization without having any first hand experience.<<<

Whoa! Hold your horses I thought this was HN!

Yes, it's true that I am offending your nationalistic sensibilities and I apologize for that, but I need you to understand don't give a damn about patriotism. No offense, I don't get choked up about national anthems, flags and parades. As George Carlin would say they are symbols and I leave symbols to the simple minded. I care more about people instead. Maybe, I am not worthy enough to be a citizen of this state in your eyes, but that is something for neither of us to decide.

Take care. :)

lewstherin6• 16 years ago

As much as I want to believe your statement that it is not meant to be a political statement, it certainly sounds extremely like one. However I will take you on your word and reply accordingly.

If you ask me, there is perhaps a brighter side to this. As a nation recovering from massive looting for over two centuries, a large number of us are actually doing quite well. Compared with other nations who became independent at the same time and considering the amount of resources we had at that time, we have managed a fairly prosperous growing democracy.

Regarding abject poverty and health care resources , a considerable number of people are actually getting the promised benefits. Wen I broke my hand a month, I saw a guy who earns by plying rickshaws waiting to see the doctor at a top tier hospital thanks to some government insurance scheme. Human rights issues are actually brought to the notice of people thanks to the media and public outcry often forces action.

Yes there are things to be worried about and a good number of our problems will actually be resolved much faster if the educated masses actually got out to vote. However in the mean time, technology is certainly helping solve most of our problems. Especially reducing corruption.

moultano5• 16 years ago

>As much as I want to believe your statement that it is not meant to be a political statement, it certainly sounds extremely like one.

What would it mean for this to be a political statement? How would that change how you reply?

moultano5• 16 years ago

The number of times you are getting downvoted reminds me of a disturbing trend I've noticed in online discussions about India, and in the papers when I've visited the country. There's a crazy nationalist streak there that doesn't seem to be familiar with the idea of "loyal opposition" or the value of dissent. That worries me a lot more than the corruption.

lewstherin6• 16 years ago

Get surrounded by neighbours like India does, have your workplace called as chop shops, be the butt of several "stealing jobs" jokes and you will automatically feel a little touchy when some armchair critic sits and posts twenty things wrong in the country and basically calls your nation unfit to live. What I see above is not loyal dissent by any means.

apu• 16 years ago

I don't know if this is so specific to India.

In a lot of the US (maybe even most of it?) you get called a traitor or unAmerican or whatever for not agreeing with the government or the Republicans or whoever is in power and control of the media at the moment.

Even in more liberal places in the US, there are often unstated limits to what you can talk about ("saying X is maybe ok, but Y is just ridiculous/crazy/anti-blah").

Outside the US, I certainly see this kind of nationalism in many other countries, such as Israel and China to name a couple.

nalbyuites• 16 years ago

Worry not! Despite the "crazy nationalist streak" that you see online, Indians are actually one of the most critical of their government. Ask literally any Indian on the street about governance and hear the expletives fly.

So they are more than aware of corruption and poor governance. Except - they have tired of the doomsday predictions heard since 1947. The down votes are probably because the 'cancer' symptoms are brought up ad nauseum in Western outlets as reasons India (as if its a simple monolith) failed.

Like pg said for startups: If you feel that you will fail, you stop working and then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think this applies to a country's psyche too, like it does to founders.

rajdevar• 16 years ago

Appriciate your lengthy analysis with wiki links. if you are from India originally, its time for you to shut your laptop and go back ,take part in cleaning the mess.

korch• 16 years ago

It sure is a good thing that India has nukes!

I have a Too-Big-To-Fail theory—as any complex social system grows, it reaches some kind of equilibrium boundary, and if it tries to grow beyond that, black swans, catastrophes, and the usual apocalyptic implosion inevitably occurs. No I know this is going to put me out on the fringe of Anarcho-Libertarian-Fascists, but we all need to stop building social organizations that are too big to fail. The consequences of total failure just keep getting bigger(see WW2).

So the solution for India is that it needs to be a few smaller independent nations. Even the idea of a single, unified "India" is a fiction created less than a century ago for the political purpose of throwing off the oppressive, exploitive imperial rule of the British.

Just look at Rome or any empire. It's the same exact high level pattern. I'd say the same applies to China, Russia, and the US too! (God knows I'd love to throw those Red-State weirdos out of the Union–just kidding of course).

If humanity wants to survive for the long-term, living in peace and prosperity on this Blue Marble, we're going to need to master our collective ability to break down inefficient social organizations without resorting to the same kind of barbaric warfare which we've always used.

cynicalkane2• 16 years ago

Yes, that's very interesting. How interesting what wonderful people they are. Except that they are terrorists and mass murderers. To say that they have gained power by being saints rather ignores the salient detail that they also gained power with extreme violence. Strangely, their acts of terror against police and civilians alike are documented on the very page you linked...

todayiamme7• 16 years ago

I haven't said that they are saints, and personally I think that they are nothing but glorified thugs controlled by terrorists, but my opinion has nothing to do with the facts at hand and what they are actually doing on the ground. Or, more crucially, what those villagers think of them and why they support them.

akshayubhat3• 16 years ago

Wow this guy is a real idiot if he is making statement like this, probably he can use same logic to justify Hamas.

ankeshk• 16 years ago

Thanks for pointing out what is wrong with India today.

Go back a bit. And you will actually see that while things are bad, they are actually improving. And improving at a very quick pace.

Sure curroption is a big problem. But it always was.

Conflict over Kashmir is there since India's independence.

Naxal conflict in the South is there since 1970s.

So your conclusion of "but what is certain that India won't have a congenial atmosphere necessary for stability and wealth creation" does not seem quite right if you take history into consideration. Because things are improving.

Some of the things that were bad are still bad. But some of the things have improved tremendously.

* Per capita crime is down

* Illiteracy rate is down (Yes some schools are very bad - especially in rural areas. But overall, they are better than it was 10 years back.)

* Death rate is down.

* Infant mortality is down.

* Mal nutrition is down (even though there are food scams in some villages)

* Per capita income - in both cities and villages - is up. Way up.

* Government is actually going to reduce corporate taxes after a year (making things better conducive for businesses).

* Trade relations with other countries is way better. Indians can travel to 60 countries without visas now.

* Infrastructure is way better.

* Standard of living is higher than ever before.

* Pollution is worse though.

Things are actually getting better. Not worse. But you won't know this if you just follow the current news (which is way too sensationalist in India). You need to see things from a 50 year historical window. I don't see a growing cancer in India like you do.

tl;dr: Some of the things that were bad 30-40 years ago are still bad. But some of the things have improved tremendously since the past 2 decades. Very few things have actually gotten worse.

psranga2• 16 years ago

Umm, RIM is providing to India exactly what they have to many other countries. So you are probably excluding a large part of the world from your list of places fit for you to live. The agreement covers "consumer Blackberry services". Presumably, corporate Blackberry emails are encrypted using a customer-generated key and hence RIM can't decrypt those.

FWIW, I am happy to see such snooping by governments. If this is what it takes for mass adoption of encryption, then so be it.

Your points about corruption in India are on the mark. I disagree that "few are willing ...". I see signs of change and renewal all the time. Change isn't fast enough though.

senthil_rajasek• 16 years ago

Your earnest tone and a surprising number of up votes prompted me to write this response,

Based on my own experiences in India and your remarks (quoted below), you strike me as a dejected young man.

"This is precisely why I don't want to stay in India beyond a certain point."

"the state has promised food and ration for school going children with uniforms. So, what happens on the ground is that a few officials come together and sell the provisions on the open market and buy substandard food instead"

"What will emerge out of this chaos is something that no one can predict..."

Now what is not right and in fact dangerous about these opinions is that some may believe them and take them for the complete facts.

Have you ever thought about the guy who promised and then implemented the food and uniform scheme for school going children? What was his motivation? Is he oblivious to the corruption around him? I think not, I think he is working within the constraints to make sure that the next generation is literate, healthy and has a better future.

For nearly 20 years I have been betting against India (I grew up there and now live in the US) and I have been proven wrong.

When you sympathize with Kashmiri separatists did you also think about what happens if there was indeed a separate Kashmir? Will that be a more peaceful prosperous nation or a neighbor at war ? We already have examples of such states in the Indian sub-continent.

"What is far more disturbing is that few are willing to even look at the problem let alone start developing solutions for it."

I disagree. People do recognize these problems and are addressing it,

From the same wikipedia article you quoted,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite-Maoist_insurgency

"In 2006 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the Naxalites "The single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country."

India has a billion problems and pray tell me which nation does not ?

Here are some questions that I found interesting :

Why has this nation not disintegrated in the last 60 years ? What binds it together?

The answers to these questions amaze me. Try as an exercise finding answers to these questions.

If I were you I will not let these issues depress you and sway you one way or the other. Like Mahatma Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world".

I am not a nationalist and I am not the first to say this but there are only a few nations/civilizations that at its core firmly believes in an "Universal Well Being".

And remember the motto of India is "Truth alone Triumphs".

sunny_s• 16 years ago

You make it sound like India's the only country with these problems. I could easily list all of these for other countries as well, but I'll refrain from doing so. This is not the right forum for it, and secondly armchair activism is a futile cause.

SoftwareMaven2• 16 years ago

I'm following this story with some interest because it may have an impact on my startup. There are conflicting reports on this[1]. RIM appears to be saying they haven't given anything up, and there is some question whether they can give anything up, given BES is based on PKI and RIM doesn't have the keys.

[1] http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech-now/entry/indi...

iuhjytgfbnjhmk3• 16 years ago

It isn't needed for BES, if you have BES you have a corporate office that they can turn up at with a warrant (and or a battering ram) and take all the messages they want.

This is about John Doe mailing John Smith and discussing things they don't want the government to know about.

draebek2• 16 years ago

Well, if your corporate office is in e.g. India, at least.

So this whole hullabaloo is just about whether or not India will be able to sniff messages going through RIM's servers? (I think I've seen this referred to as BIS?) Do they just want the ability to do this without having to go through procedures first with RIM; that is, without telling RIM that they're going to decrypt messages?

cryptoz• 16 years ago

I disagree that a message is encrypted in the first place, if more than the two end parties can read the message! If RIM can "decrypt" a message meant to be private between two parties, the message was never "encrypted" in the first place.

iuhjytgfbnjhmk3• 16 years ago

The call from your GSM cell phone to the base station is encrypted - the link to somebody else's landline phone isn't.

phunel2• 16 years ago

It would seem the best method to negate this intrusion would be to utilize tools already in existence, PGP being the most obvious. To date though, there is no working beta (that I'm aware of) of a mobile solution in the thunderbird/openPGP vein. I understand the inherent vulnerability of having your private keys on a mobile device, but is anyone working in this space? Is it possible within the confines of the iPhone, Blackberry, etc. mail client? I know personally I would pay quite a bit for an app that mimics the thunderbird/openPGP integration on a mobile device.

av5002• 16 years ago

There is an android app that does that: http://pgpmanager.blogspot.com/

phunel2• 16 years ago

Thanks for pointing this out. Looks like a promising new project, but I wouldn't say it quite mimics openPGP on thunderbird - i.e. no integration with a mail client.

draebek2• 16 years ago

For SMS I know of TextSecure http://www.whispersys.com/ on Android--though I've never used it and haven't researched its security. (I do use OTR through Pidgin/Adium.)

av5002• 16 years ago

Somehow I fail to see how this is "shocking" news. India is just kindly asking RIM to provide to them what they did provide to the US and other western governments for years, namely the ability to snoop on the message traffic.

And of course a real criminal or terrorist can just use any encrypted IMAP server in a remote location to exchange messages in secrecy, completely bypassing RIM and the snooping effort...

zeteo2• 16 years ago

Sure, if by "kindly asking" you mean "we'll shut you down unless you comply".

And the fact that "serious" criminals will not be impeded makes this even more of a suspicious measure - looks more like it's aimed towards snooping on innocent parties, such as journalists and political opponents.

akshayubhat3• 16 years ago

Can US government do the same? If it can I see no problem in Indian government expecting a similar capability.

akshayubhat3• 16 years ago

Can US government decrypt the messages or get them via Warrantless Wiretapping, or force RIM? If the answer is yes, then I do not see any reason why India or some other country should not be allowed to do the same.

known2• 16 years ago

Some hidden issues in Indian society

    Zero social mobility

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

    One of the most corruption nation in the world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India

    836 million people live on 20 cents a day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India

    Pakistan is a better nation to do business than India

http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyrankings/

    Indians among most corrupt while doing business abroad

http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians-among-...

To avoid Indian ban, BlackBerry maker allows govt. access to encrypted messages

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