James Delahunty
11 Dec 2011 11:24
Indonesian regulator cites "security concerns."
Indonesia's BTRI, the communications regulator, has told the Jakarta Post that it may have to ban BlackBerry Messenger and Internet services in the country, saying the data exchanged is "not safe."
Of course, this is simply not true, and the real point of contention for the Indonesian regulator is RIM's refusal to locate a BBM server within the country. As things stand, all messages sent and received using BlackBerry Messenger are handled by Canadian RIM servers.
The information is also encrypted, protecting it from prying eyes. This strong data protection system is one of the main reasons BlackBerry's have been a corporate success.
Saudi Arabia and India made threats of blocking the BBM service in the countries because RIM would not put BBM servers in them. Even if they did, the governments still couldn't decrypt the information without getting the key from the account holders' handsets.
RIM has complied with orders to hand over data in the past, but maintains it does not have the ability to monitor or view private messages.