Comment Re:Am I missing something here? (Score 1) 176
Ok, the Indian government can tell Blackberry to give up its keys for a particular encryption layer, but what is to stop people from using RSA 512-bit encryption with their e-mails? Wouldn't this force terrorists to pay attention to what encryption methods they are using?
The problem is that the entire Blackberry infrastructure is built around them never having your decryption keys. The keys are generated by the customers, and stored on their own Blackberry Enterprise Servers and mobile devices. So, even if they wanted to eavesdrop on their customers communication, the only way that would be possible would be to release new versions of the BES with built-in back doors. If that was the case, I think customers would just switch to Microsoft ActiveSync, which uses SSL and is secure.
I can't help but think that all of these lawmakers don't understand how public/private key encryption works. They must think it works similar to the old wiretaps where you just connect two wires onto their line and listen in. Is there no way to explain encryption to these lawmakers in a way that they can understand? Maybe we need to resurrect zombie Ted Stevens to break out his "series of tubes" conversations...