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Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

I strangely want to give kudos to both sides. The phrasing of 'the problems you've had in terms of security' is seriously misleading and very poorly worded. I guess I've never seen the behind the scenes legal voices jump in before, but clearly, that question is baiting (unless RIM has some security issues I'm unaware of).

On the other side, cool that the BBC posts this for all to see, rather than just hiding it away somewhere.

Though for the general public who don't know if RIM has a security flaw or not, what effect does something like this have??

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http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-07-29/india...

"The [Ministry of Home Affairs] has asked the [Department of Telecommunication] to tell [RIM] in no uncertain terms that its emails and other data services must comply with formats that can be monitored by security and intelligence agencies."

The Indian government has threatened to cut off Blackberry services if RIM doesn't comply. I don't think calling that a security issue is off the mark.

It should be called a privacy issue or something like that. I think the CEO wanted to avoid having his platform deemed insecure as in has security holes.

I'm not too sure what the difference is here. One of the reasons that Blackberries are so common in the business and government sectors is because of the security(and privacy) that they provide. The two are basically the same thing.

The Indian government was asking for a backdoor into the system. That's more of a security issue than privacy.

It's a security issue if the Indian government, or anyone else for that matter, found a way to create a backdoor into RIM's system without RIM's knowledge and consent.

As that isn't the case, then it's a privacy issue because the Indian government demanded RIM put in a backdoor for reasons or surveillance of its population.

Does this privacy issue potentially lead to a security issue? Yes, but not for RIM, but rather for it's users that depend on the privacy of RIM's service over which they may transmit sensitive information.

Your reference is 9 months old. This is part of why it is unfair. If it was a current issue, that would make sense to bring up in the discussion. But the problem was resolved to the satisfaction of those governments, meaning that the average customer should not be concerned.

This one is only a month old and suggests that the issue is far from resolved:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/nokia-complies-in-indi...

"A deadline of March 31st has been given to the BlackBerry manufacturer, Research in Motion, to hand over encryption keys which would allow the Indian government to intercept corporate emails and other data used on the secure handsets."

"The corporate BlackBerry system works in such a secure manner, that even the BlackBerry manufacturer cannot intercept messages on its systems, leading to Research in Motion being unable to offer what the Indian government wants."

Was this resolved? I can't find anything newer than the above. Maybe the BBC-interviewer couldn't either and wanted to know what's happening.

Rory asked an intentionally loaded and HuffPo-like question;

"Can I move on to the problems you've had in terms of security...and your various arguments you've had with the Indian government and a number of governments in the Middle East"

This is like asking Craigslist about their "issues with revenue" since it's free to post anything outside of jobs, and being free is one of the key features that defines Craigslist. Craigslist doesn't have issues with being free, OTHER PEOPLE (like newspapers) have issues with the fact that Craigslist is free. Same with RIM, OTHER PEOPLE have issues with the fact that RIM is very secure. The question implied that RIM has issues with their security.

Worst is BBC then tried to act like he wasn't sensationalizing with their take on the question Rory asked...

"...he asked a question for BBC Click about RIM's problems in India and the Middle East, where governments want to gain greater access to the tight security system used for Blackberry's business users."

No he did not. The above question is framed correctly, and I'm sure would have gotten a response.

I don't understand your analogy: in the Craigslist case Craigslist has no issues being free, but others have issues with it being free. Craiglist is not making changes to their free model to appease others.

In the RIM case the system is secure except when they are giving access to the system to governments - making it not secure (at least in many people's eyes).

How are these similar?

It's definitely not a perfect analogy.

My point was that the BBC reporter was trying to create an issue out of something that is a core principle of the company (and something they do well in fact) and is intentionally misleading. I was trying to show the ridiculousness of it and help justify why the CEO got flustered and ended the interview.

So RIM is secure, the CEO is proud of it, and the question inferred that they're not secure.

Craigslist is free, the CEO is (probably) proud of it, and a question that infers that they have a problem because they don't charge for listings would be similar.

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