Blackberry Development Talk

BlackBerry Controversy: Negotiations Going on Without any Solution Yet

Aug 9, 2010 News

Research In Motion is still trapped in a deadlock situation with several governments in different parts of the globe over the security issue with BlackBerry secured messaging. Experts hold different opinions to estimate the loss; but almost everyone is sure that RIM must fix up the issue as soon as possible. Otherwise it can affect the business of RIM and also the BlackBerry developers.

RIM is trying their best in the negotiation process with the authorities. It has been reported by Reuters that the Canadian giant has proposed to set up separate servers in Middle East (especially Saudi Arabia & U.A.E.). Though much details are not available, but the doubt remains the same. Without the master key of the network, how would it be helpful to decode malicious contents. Moreover, RIM itself has claimed that it does not hold any such key.

In another discussion with Govt. of India, RIM has proposed to provide the metadata of the messages. Technically the metadata is the data about a data, which means it can provide you the information about an encrypted message but not the content. The information may include the location of sender & receiver, size of the message etc.

News agencies have reported, quoting a source, that the governments are demanding for the uninterrupted access to the content of the messages, where as RIM is pursuing on the issue of limited and case wise (like lawsuit) access. However, no reports are available about the concern of the EU Commission or French Government.

The situation is still on fire, affecting the BlackBerry application development market to a great extent.

Tags: BlackBerry network, BlackBerry security flaw, Encrypted messages, EU Commission, French Government, India, Saudi Arabia