Comments on: This May Be FUD

By: Dave Birch

Dave Birch — Fri, 30 May 2008 05:20:09 +0000

I always call these “pork pie” phrases because of these lines in “How to get ahead in advertising” with Richard E. Grant…
Clergyman reading the newspaper: “The police say the bag may have contained drugs”.
Richard E. Grant: “It may have contained a pork pie”.
P.S This film also has one of my all-time favourite movie quotes. Richard E. Grant is looking at the health warning on the side of a packet of cigarettes and says “the only f**ker this ever frightened was the Chancellor of the Exchequer”.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:35:53 +0000

The article specifically notes that this would apply to non-corporate users, so no BES. So, the endpoints are the handset and RIM’s servers, so RIM certainly have at least one set of keys. The problematic part for RIM is that they probably use the same keys for all their servers, and so it isn’t just Indian customers who would be violated.

By: PHB

PHB — Fri, 23 May 2008 08:51:36 +0000

The encryption is not end-to-end. In fact thats something of a meaningless concept unless Alice and Bob can do large digit modular arithmetic in their head AND SHA-1. I gave up doing that after we moved from MD4 to MD5.
All encryption is end-to-end between at least two ends even if its just the next hop in a chain.
The encryption in RIM is only between the mail server and the device. In order to perform an intercept you serve the party holding the server. Thats what happens here in the US and its what will happen in India.
Now in some cases govts want to be able to do an intercept without knowledge of the server. And that is particularly the case when its a business that might be engaged in something illegal or just a foreign competitor they want to illegally nobble. So they might be demanding some sort of backdoor.
So US companies doing business in India might well be advised to bring their RIM server code in from the US and not mention this to the hyper-efficient Indian justice system that only takes 25 years to settle a civil case over a drain.