We probably shouldn’t have been too surprised when the Indian government yesterday announced that Research in Motion had offered a proposal–an attempt to work with the government’s request for increased access to the information stored on its citizens’ smartphones for “law enforcement” purposes.
Principled stands are all well and good, but at the end of the day, RIM is a company and companies exist to make money, right? And India, after all, is a huge potential market for any consumer electronics manufacturer. In a statement yesterday, Indian government announced that the BlackBerry manufacturer had, “made certain proposals for lawful access by law enforcement agencies.”
The aforementioned “proposals” come after an ultimatum by the India government, which threated to shut down BlackBerry support if RIM didn’t comply by August 31st.
The question then, ultimately, is whether RIM will be forced to make similar concessions in other countries. The India kerfuffle, after all, came on the heels of similar threats by the United Arab Emirates, which threatened to block services after October 11th. Within a few days, Saudi Arabia was threatening its own block, if RIM didn’t meet its request by August 6th (though the latter did, ultimately, grant the company an extension).
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