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Commentary: Who do you trust less? RIM or Tifatul?

The issue of whether BlackBerry should open a local server, at least as far as users here are concerned, boils down to the question of whether we trust RIM, the Canadian-based maker of the popular hand-held device, less than we trust the government, in this case Communications and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring

Endy M. Bayuni (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, August 13, 2010

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Commentary: Who do you trust less? RIM or Tifatul?

T

he issue of whether BlackBerry should open a local server, at least as far as users here are concerned, boils down to the question of whether we trust RIM, the Canadian-based maker of the popular hand-held device, less than we trust the government, in this case Communications and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring.

Unfortunately, the final decision is not made by the 1.5 million or so BlackBerry users in Indonesia as to what the government should do. Most likely, the government has a different agenda that may be in conflict with users’ interests.

Taking his cue from the United Arab Emirates’ decision this month to ban BlackBerrys because of a dispute over who should control the server, Tifatul says he has written to Research in Motion (RIM) requesting the company set up a server locally for its Indonesian users. Unlike the UAE and other Gulf states, Indonesia has not given RIM an ultimatum, but the request is nevertheless on the table. So the threat of a ban or a boycott is not imminent, at least for now.

Tifatul gave several reasons for his decision: One is related to income tax saying RIM would be paying the government if it had a server in Indonesia. Another reason is that by using a local server, instead of one in Canada or Britain, BlackBerry users benefit from faster streams for local exchanges, and potentially cheaper subscription rates, with one calculation suggesting there could be up to a 20 percent saving.

The third and last reason, and probably the most important one, is to do with national security.

Currently, the government has no access to the server, and therefore cannot monitor the exchange of messages conducted by BlackBerry users, most particularly those exchanges through BlackBerry Messenger.

We have come to learn that the police, and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), have relied on wiretapping, including access to servers for text messaging, as part of their investigation. This is particularly important in cases dealing with terrorism and corruption. With a server located in Canada or Britain, investigators cannot monitor the exchanges people made through BlackBerry.

Those seem plausible reasons for the government to want to follow the footsteps of many Gulf countries, and now India too, in demanding access to the BlackBerry server.

But what about the interests of users?

Subscription prices do not appear to be a major issue for Indonesians, as local service providers have developed innovative schemes that make BlackBerrys affordable, and even allow you daily, weekly and monthly rates.

One of the major attractions of the BlackBerry, and one reason for its success, is precisely that it is a secure way to communicate, free from unwarranted intrusions, including from the government.

Not that many people use BlackBerry for evil purposes, but the right to privacy is, to many people, a sacred thing. Businesses, including those in Indonesia, also count as among the largest users of the hand-held device for that reason. Probably a bunch of terrorists in this country have used BlackBerrys as they have used other means of communications, but surely there are other ways of catching terrorists than by monitoring their BlackBerry communication.

Tifatul is wrong in taking his cue from Gulf states, which are governed by monarchs. There, they need to monitor what their subjects are saying about the kings and princes. Indonesia is a democratic country, and many bad things are being said on a daily basis about President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, ministers (including Tifatul) and just about everybody else on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, websites, and on television and newspapers. Nothing that is being said on BlackBerry will likely shock the government.

The trouble with giving the government access to a BlackBerry server is that it is liable to abuse. While nobody wants to obstruct the police or the KPK in their work going after terrorists and corrupt officials, we have also learned that the authorities have no qualms with abusing its power. In 2007, we learned that the police secured access to the transcript of SMS exchanges of Tempo journalist Metta Dharmaputra, even though he was not a suspect in any corruption or terrorist case.

While there is no absolute guarantee that RIM, a private company based in Canada, would not abuse its power and use its data for its business interests, or hand over data or transcripts to a hostile government, there is no particular reason to suspect that at this point. At least, millions of BlackBerry users attest to that.

The issue about who should control the server of BlackBerry comes down to the question of trust.
Who do we trust less? RIM or the government?

Tifatul will probably not like to hear the outcome of a survey among current BlackBerry users in Indonesia if it was held today. Perhaps someone should take the initiative to run the survey, just as something for him to consider before making a hasty decision.

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