UAE clears use of BlackBerry even as India continues to stall
April 17th, 2011 - 12:59 pm ICT by ANIAbu Dhabi, Apr. 17 (ANI): Even as India continues refuses to give the all clear for use of Blackberry services such as the messenger, e-mail and browsing over a dispute related to access to encrypted details, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has confirmed continuation of all BlackBerry services for individuals and business customers.
In a statement, the TRA said that any confusion to TRA regulations would be clarified by the TRA, the Gulf News reports.
The latest development related to Blackberry services in the UAE comes over a month after a top official of Research in Motion Ltd., the manufacturers of Blackberry, said Indian security agencies were making “rather astonishing” demands for increased powers to monitor e-mail and other data traffic, raising serious privacy issues that threaten to harm the country’s reputation with foreign investors.
Robert Crow, vice president of industry and government relations for RIM, said last month that India’s Home Ministry, which oversees domestic security, wants the ability to intercept in real time any communication on any Indian network-including BlackBerry’s highly secure corporate-email service-and get it in readable, plain-text format.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, he said such a broad requirement raises the question of whether the government believes any communications are legally off-limits.
“You connect those dots and you’re saying, ‘Holy smokes,’ ” Mr. Crow said during an interview.
He said: “This claim is made in an environment where we don’t really have any privacy- or data-protection laws-and where we have a pretty poor administrative record of keeping similar things like wiretaps secret.”
A spokesman for India’s Home Ministry declined to comment.
Government officials in India have previously said they want to ensure suspected terrorists and criminals can’t elude government surveillance by using newfangled communications technologies.
Under current Indian law, the home secretary authorizes all telecom surveillance by central government agencies for 60 days at a time.
RIM has faced demands from India to give security agencies a way to access encrypted messages on BlackBerry’s corporate-email service.
BlackBerry has repeatedly said its system is designed so that it doesn’t have the “keys” to unlock users’ messages-and it has refused to change its technology architecture in any one of the 175 countries where it offers service. (ANI)
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Tags: administrative record, corporate email service, data traffic, domestic security, e mail, foreign investors, government relations, government surveillance, gulf news, home ministry, indian security, mr crow, research in motion, research in motion ltd, robert crow, security agencies, telecommunications regulatory authority, united arab emirates, wall street journal, wiretaps