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Comment by av500 | Hacker News Reader

Somehow I fail to see how this is "shocking" news. India is just kindly asking RIM to provide to them what they did provide to the US and other western governments for years, namely the ability to snoop on the message traffic.

And of course a real criminal or terrorist can just use any encrypted IMAP server in a remote location to exchange messages in secrecy, completely bypassing RIM and the snooping effort...

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Sure, if by "kindly asking" you mean "we'll shut you down unless you comply".

And the fact that "serious" criminals will not be impeded makes this even more of a suspicious measure - looks more like it's aimed towards snooping on innocent parties, such as journalists and political opponents.

Can US government do the same? If it can I see no problem in Indian government expecting a similar capability.

The US government has an implicit capability to eavesdrop because RIM servers are located in the country. _Requiring_ that servers be placed in your country with the _only_ purpose of being able to eavesdrop is simply despicable. You have no problem living in a country that freely imitates the human rights/ privacy record of Saudi Arabia?!

The Indian (and other govts) asked for the server to be placed in their country because otherwise RIM will invoke the technicality that that don't have to honor Indian govt's snoop requests since the server isn't located within Indian jurisdiction.

Complying with foreign snoop requests for a server located in the US may (IANAL) make it possible for somebody to sue RIM in US courts for complying with a request that didn't come from US law enforcement. So RIM is highly unlikely to honor snoop requests for servers outside the country making the demand. Hence the demand to place servers within countries interested in snooping on their citizens.

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