The Hindu Business Line : Back in the spotlight

The blackberry is once again in the news after it had received some adverse publicity in the recent past following the breakdown of its system once in April 2007, and again this February.

Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian company that owns the service, had dismissed the two outages, which caused a severe disruption of traffic in parts of North America, as the result of a simple flaw in a software upgrade. The issue raised by this system failure was one of reliability.

The issue that has come to the fore now is one of whether blackberry communication could prejudice a country’s national security. Indian intelligence agencies have suddenly woken up to the fact — something known for several years — that blackberry traffic is routed through a server outside the country, and it can, therefore, be used to smuggle out messages that have a bearing on the security of the country.

This wisdom is somewhat belated because blackberry service came into India about two years ago and is burgeoning beyond belief. The grievance of security organisations in the country is that mails flowing through blackberry cannot be intercepted by local authorities for satisfying themselves that they do not contain sensitive material, which could imperil national sovereignty. Forget about why this fact did not arouse government curiosity all these days. Now that agencies are alive to the danger, how far are their concerns genuine and not imaginary?

RIM officials and those of the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) have met in Delhi for discussions on the government’s concerns. The outcome is not yet known. But what is known is that the government does not contemplate a total ban on blackberry, a move that would negate the fundamental principles of global business. The wireless e-mail system that blackberry provides is extremely user-friendly and modern trade and commerce depends heavily on it for easy flow of communication.

The problem, however, is that any overt desire of governments to look at all the messages flowing through the system raises grave issues of privacy, if not secrecy. That too at a time when privacy issues occupy a primary position in international trade, and the Indian legal system itself is considered the world over as extremely indifferent and weak.

At the same time, Government of India (GoI) cannot also be faulted when it wants that blackberry traffic cannot be totally outside the purview of monitoring. It is quite possible that the GoI has found that terrorists and other anti-social elements are using this channel to communicate with the outside world and also receive instructions from anti-Indian elements abroad.

Even if this is mere guesswork on my part, we know how technology-savvy terrorist groups are and how they are constantly looking for gaps in the existing surveillance methods of law enforcement agencies. That blackberry with servers outside India (mostly in Canada and the US) offers an attractive channel of communication, which it is not technically feasible to oversee by governments, is a fact that should be obvious to terrorists and those of the same genre. This is especially because all messages are encrypted as they pass through blackberry servers, a fact that frustrates law enforcement agencies.

Incidentally, there are several countries that have serious reservations over unrestricted blackberry service. Both the French and Australian governments are extremely cautious in the matter, and have advised their civil servants to be wary when transmitting information through the system. Russia has also been overtly suspicious of blackberry. It was only a few months ago that it permitted two mobile operators in the country to sell the system. And that, only after the Federal Security Service had wrested for itself the right and ability to read all messages going through the blackberry channel.

What is the way out? How do we blend concerns of national security and privacy? This should be the theme of any government-RIM debate. One piece of information is that the GoI has proposed three alternatives for RIM’s consideration.

One is whether blackberry can create a mirror image of all mails passing through its system and preserve them for at least six months. This will give enough time for intelligence outfits to go through them at leisure and satisfy themselves that they did not contain any material harmful to India. This would confirm that what the GoI is aiming at is not censorship but a mere monitoring.

The second course of action suggested is that RIM should locate its mail servers in India. It is hardly likely that RIM will agree to this because it proposes a procedure that is totally different from the company’s current international practice.

The third suggestion is one of downgrading encryption to a simpler platform so that agencies in India are able to read all blackberry mail with greater ease.

Whatever be the outcome of current RIM-GoI talks, one thing is sure that terrorists will move to another medium if blackberry traffic becomes subject to government scrutiny.

This is a cat and mouse game that will go on relentlessly. It is why unrestricted and unregulated cyberspace is not only impractical but dangerous as well.

Until we learn to use a remarkable medium such as the Internet with absolute discipline and restraint, we would remain subject to surveillance by government agencies, a few of which are known to use their authority only at the dictates of those controlling government at any point of time.

The writer is a former CBI Director who is currently Adviser (Security) to TCS Ltd.

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