Indonesia and US State Department join RIM row

The row over BlackBerry data is turning into a full scale international incident as Indonesia and Lebanon join India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in seeking to ban the RIM email and messaging services. The countries argue that they have no access to data that is managed offshore by a foreign company and this compromises national security. Most are demanding an encryption key so they can access communications they regard as suspect, while Indonesia - one of the world's largest and fastest growing mobile markets - wants RIM to establish a server in the country to manage local email services.

Focal Points:

• The Obama administration has joined the debate, even though RIM is Canadian, because of the heavy use of the BlackBerry system by US travelers and multinationals, and because the same demands could be made of other managed mobile email services such as Google's. RIM says it does not possess keys to its customers' data and so cannot share these with governments abroad.
• The US government says it is trying to broker compromises between RIM and the rising number of administrations concerned at the rapid spread of mobile email and data usage. "We are taking time to consult and analyze the full range of interests and issues at stake because we know that there is a legitimate security concern, but there's also a legitimate right of free use and access," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement. The Department stressed that its intervention did not equate to a commercial endorsement of RIM but a spokesperson said: "Many of us in government do have BlackBerrys", while any bans on the service's secure messaging attributes would affect the conduct of US diplomacy and business.
• Indonesia has renewed a demand originally voiced last year that RIM allow it to monitor BlackBerry data. It wants RIM to place a server in the country that would allow authorities to guarantee to customers the security of the data that RIM now processes and saves in Canada, said Heru Sutadi, commissioner of the regulator BRTI. However, the country says it will stop short of banning the BlackBerry email service.
• RIM is in a difficult dilemma because too much compromise with the governments would reduce the attractiveness of its highly secure offering to corporate clients, but if it does face bans in major economies like India, that will also eat into its appeal to business travelers and multinational firms.
• RIM says it does not have access to the data that some governments want, and that no 'master key' or 'back door' to its system exists. The symmetric key system used in the BlackBerry security architecture for enterprise customers means that only the customer possesses a copy of the key.

Editor’s Note: Unique circumstances, cultures and political environments make international service delivery challenging. In this case, some of the international entities are concerned about locally-generated information being managed and stored in a foreign country (Canada). The responses to this vary from encryption to local monitoring of private conversations.