Just last week it looked like RIM was ready to had over its Blackberry message encryption to the Indian authorities. Now, it seems as if, to quote singer/songwriter Tom Petty, RIM has had a Change of Heart.

From the chorus:

There’s been a change, Yeah there’s been a change of heart, Said there’s been a change, You push just a little too far, You make it just a little too hard, There’s been a change of heart

That’s a change from last week, when it was reported that RIM would hand over the crypto keys for its “non-business enterprise customers.”

According to a RIM statement, its encryption architecture doesn’t allow for anyone, not even RIM itself, to break open ciphered messages.

“The Blackberry security architecture for enterprise customers is purposefully designed to exclude the capability for Research in Motion or any third party to read encrypted information under any circumstances,”

Source: Indian Express Newspaper

If this is true, and I really hope it is, there is no way RIM can fulfill the Indian government’s request for the keys so they’d be able to read messages for certain investigations. Though, I’m quite confident, the government will find a way.

If they don’t, let’s see if the government ups the ante to a “don’t come around here no more” threat to RIM.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 9:16 am and is filed under Security, Technology, Wireless. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.  Both comments and pings are currently closed.