Blackberry Resists Sharing User Information With Indian Government

Citing anonymous sources, the Journal says that RIM has a "small" facility in Mumbai that was set up earlier this year to field surveillance requests from the Indian government. The Journal's sources say that the government must provide RIM with enough legal justification for the company to hand over an individual's "decoded messages," including BlackBerry Messenger chats.

But Indian government apparently wants more. For example, the Journal's sources say, the government still cannot intercept corporate e-mail messages, which has long been its goal. The government would also like to put a law enforcement official in RIM's headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, to more securely present surveillance requests to the company. Those terms, however, have not been accepted by RIM, the sources say.

RIM and India have been engaged in a bitter battle over government access to information for over a year now. And so far, RIM has balked at giving in to all of the government's demands, even though it has faced deadlines that, if not met, would result in the country shutting down its service. As each deadline passed, however, no such shutdowns occurred.

I'm glad to see them holding out on the most important things, such as email and messenger correspondence.  It's disturbing that the Indian government is so determined to intercept and read the private conversations, and that they are trying to establish a system where the citizens have no rights.

Blackberry's doing something right, I figured it deserved as much attention as their many mistakes.