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Indonesia Turns Up Heat over Encrypted BlackBerry Phones
Ismira Lutfia | September 04, 2010

A team from Indonesia A team from Indonesia's respected Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has visited BlackBerry maker Research in Motion in Canada. Indonesian politicians and officials are fans of the heavily encrypted BlackBerry communications system. (JG Photo/Safir Makki)
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ricebowl
5:40pm Sep 6, 2010

I fail to understand why the KPK is visiting RIM rather than Infocomm. Additional, it is ridiculous to add that 'the leasing of bandwidth for the (RIM) servers would contribute to revenue'. Besides the fact that bandwidth revenue is not the issue at hand, the Indosat FO cable is at maximum capacity, Telkom's Palappa is priced four times any of its competitors and there is not enough bandwidth to facilitate a standard mobile phonecall. Let's deal with the real defined issues. Having said that, RIM was asked several years ago to set up a formal office in Indonesia to handle maintenance and other local issues related to the sales and service of the Blackberry product and software. This might be the time to enforce that obligation as preliminary compromise.

mauriceg
4:48pm Sep 4, 2010

How is it that the governments that want RIM to decrypt their systems or allow decryption, are precisely those whose citizens should not trust, through authoritarianism, incompetence, or a peculiar me-too deference to the Wahabi nut-job states.

jacobian64
1:26pm Sep 4, 2010

blackberry, one of a kind.

ronyboy
8:35am Sep 4, 2010

yes we have a government that is heavily "frustrated and authoritarian"


peterR
6:05am Sep 4, 2010

“State secrets passed among government officials might be leaked to a third party because the government does not have control over information management of the device,” he said.

I am not really sure that is wise for 'state secrets' to be passed between government officials using text messaging anyway.

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Jakarta. Indonesia appears to have stepped up the pressure on BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, as a minister says a team from the country’s anticorruption agency paid a visit to the company’s headquarters in Waterloo, Canada.

Communication and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring said he was informed about the trip by Chandra M Hamzah, a deputy commissioner of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), in a meeting with ministry officials this week on cybercrime and RIM.

Law enforcement officials, he said, could be interested in the heavily encrypted BlackBerry communications system. “People say that if [communications on] BlackBerry Messengers were deciphered, it would create a huge buzz because so much secret information is exchanged there,” Tifatul said late on Thursday.

The minister said an Indian intelligence report said the terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks communicated with one another by using BlackBerry services, hampering Indian authorities in detecting the plot.

RIM is embroiled in parallel disputes with India, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over concerns the smartphone’s powerful encryption technology could be used as a cover for terrorism or criminal activity.

The ministry has been pressuring RIM to set up a database center and server in Indonesia in compliance with the 2008 Information and Electronic Transaction Law (ITE). Tifatul said the center would allow authorities to conduct lawful interceptions of e-mail and other messages, and the leasing of bandwidth for the servers would contribute revenue.

Indonesia’s move comes as the UN telecommunications chief said RIM should give global law-enforcement agencies access to its customer data. Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, said authorities fighting terrorism had a right to demand access to users’ information from RIM.

That demand has been countered by privacy advocates who say the crackdown has been fueled by frustration within authoritarian governments over their inability to eavesdrop on their citizens. IT analysts, however, told the Jakarta Globe that the Indonesian government’s demands were reasonable.

Yono Reksoprodjo, an IT security analyst, said it was “important that a communication server is under direct surveillance of the authorities.”

I Made Wiryana, an IT expert from Gunadarma University, backed Yono’s assessment, adding that there also needs to be tighter controls over the monitoring of state information.

“State secrets passed among government officials might be leaked to a third party because the government does not have control over information management of the device,” he said.

He also said it would be easy for foreign telecoms to set up data servers locally, but legitimate concerns over infrastructure need to be addressed.
 

Additional reporting from Nivell Rayda & AP