"Research in Motion (RIM) is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market."RIM was born in 1984. Its headquarters is in Waterloo, Ontario, but it has offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.
One of RIM's wireless solutions is the Blackberry, a handheld, wireless device which serves not only as a phone but also as an organizer, and provides access to the Internet, email, etc.
In India, RIM and its Blackberrys have a problem. Back in March, the Indian government demanded that "RIM either allow it to snoop on its encrypted email service (or worse, drop down to 40-bit encryption), or shut down the entire Indian Blackberry network at the end of the month."
The latter would cut off about 400,000 subscribers, "so the carriers, RIM, and government officials" held a meeting to try to work out a solution.
But, there's a big problem. "ISPs are ... concerned that if RIM complies, all encrypted wireless data will be open to spying, which would make things like ecommerce virtually impossible."
The solution wasn't hammered out until a couple of days ago. You won't like the "solution."
RIM has backed down and will "allow the Indian government "to monitor the Blackberry network in that country. What's worse, it appears that RIM was more interested in covering its own ass than protecting user data during the negotiations: the only concession the company received from the Indian government was a promise that it won't be held liable if there's a leak of users' personal information." Read more here.
Maybe Bush and Company are providing a model for other countries to follow when it comes to spying on their own citizens? Politicians, of course, are all about power, and they will grab onto every opportunity to increase their power. In the United States, we have seen, especially in the past seven years, an unprecedented grab for power by the chief executive, and at the same time an unprecedented diminution of the U.S. Constitution.
The Bush administration has engaged in illegal spying on American citizens utilizing mobile networks such as AT&T and Verizon. The Bush administration has compiled huge databases on American citizens. Currently, this effort to obtain more data on American citizens has been expanded to include a DNA database.
The rationale used for these dictatorial actions is the same old tired mantra: "The terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming!" While Bush thinks that justifies his domestic spying programs, a more important purpose is to put fear into the hearts of the people so they will acquiesce in the loss of their privacy and the scuttling of their Constitution.
What's happening in India should concern all people, in every country. Our modern technology is wonderful in many ways, but it can be too easily perverted and/or converted to uses detrimental to freedom and democracy.
When the leaders of a nation tell its people, that for one reason or another, the government must use technology in such a way that it diminishes their freedoms (privacy) in order to make them secure, the country is in serious trouble. That is always the first step on the road to a dictatorship.
Under George and Dick, we're way past that first step.
1 comment:
Again I feel frustrated in that I see and understand the problem but have no control over it. I do not know how to stop it, minimize the problem, find out how deep the problem goes currently, etc. I used to have a sort of a blind faith in our system of checks and balances and the silly assumption that our representatives were concerned with our freedoms and privacy. Over the Nixon years, I lost some of that faith and hoped the Watergate investigations resolved some of the issues. Years later I see the villains have become heroes and the problem did not go away. It has become more serious and the electorate rewarded more villains by reelecting them and agreeing with them. Foreign governments seem to be more in control than we are but I do not know much about the subject.
I no longer trust our representatives to even debate the issues, as they seem to be concerned that they will be considered either as traitors or weak on terrorism. I have been told by intellighent people that we owe the lack of terrorist actions in the USA, to these methods of spying on everyone. I am not sure that is correct, as I do not think we know where all the hidden terrorists are, or who they are. They are smart enough to not be obvious and some of our more public scrutiny seems wasteful and not efficient. Terrorists do not have to use airplanes’. They can drive a truck to their targets and do their thing at unguarded places if they wish to terrorize us. They do well in foreign lands, including Israel and cause terror using different means than is expected. A suicide bomber probably can walk into many venues and cause terror. Two men hid in their car and shot people at gas stations and tied up the Washington D.C area for weeks before accidentally being discovered. They were not trained or particularly smart but they caused a lot of terror in a short space of time. As a free country, we are vulnerable. That is not going to change. We also have porous borders and they create a problem we have not begun to solve.
What price should we pay and how much freedom must be given up and to whom? I do not know the answer and do not think anyone really cares what I think, since I am not in charge of anything.
Bob Poris
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