The international controversy around RIM’s security measures continues to grow in size. According to the Economic Times, Indonesia is the latest country (along with the UAE and Saudi Arabia) to demand a change to RIM’s policy of encrypting and routing emails through its own servers. The countries deem this a threat to their sovereignty, and want RIM to install local servers rather than direct traffic internationally.
RIM was unmoved, saying:
The BlackBerry enterprise solution was designed to preclude RIM or any third party, from reading encrypted information under any circumstances, since RIM does not store or have access to the encrypted data.
Any claims that we provide, or have ever provided, something unique to the government of one country that we have not offered to the governments of all countries are unfounded.
But RIM is in a tough spot: they can’t afford to lose millions of customers any more than they can compromise their security to please local governments. It’s pretty impossible to say how this will end, though dropping share prices mean it’s already bad news for RIM. Maybe they can still make RIMonade, but we’ll see.
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