According to the latest reports, Research in Motion (RIM) says that it will not give in to demands from the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) and India to allow their governments access to BlackBerry encrypted e-mails.

Due to "security concerns" over the encryption used with the BlackBerry service, the U.A.E. and India have both confirmed that, as of October, they would block data usage on BlackBerries for residents, as well as visitors, to the countries. (Some reports indicate that the U.A.E. is only looking at the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) instant messaging service; and others note Saudi Arabia as also considering a ban.) This means that while traditional talk and text services, as well as multimedia messaging (MMS) will continue to function, customers will no longer be able to do things like check e-mail, surf the Web, or use BBM on BlackBerry smartphones. The thought process behind the decision is that because Governments do not have the capabilities to monitor messages, they feel that customers may be misusing the services.

Reports flooding the ‘Net yesterday implied that RIM had made a deal in India that would allow authorities to monitor e-mails should they so desire. But, according to further reports today, RIM adamantly claims to have done no such thing, nor have any plans to do so.

In Dubai, it appears that the ban may come into effect as early as this week; BBM messages sent to a contact there are still successfully being received today.

It appears that RIM is stuck in a Catch-22 with this situation. On the one hand, does the company compromise its high-level security, a feature that RIM has become popular for in the enterprise world, in order to give into the demands on a foreign nation? Or does the company hold its ground, and lose a large potential customer base in popular spots for business like Dubai and Abu Dhabi? What's more, should a company have to tailor its operations and features based on a country's cultural distinctions?

The situation can be likened to Google's in China. There, the Chinese Government was censoring search results from the online engine. After a hack into the Gmail system that was traced back to China, however, Google threatened to pull its search engine out of the country if the censorship didn't stop. The issue has still not been completely resolved.

UPDATE: In a prepared statement, RIM said the following: "RIM has spent over a decade building a very strong security architecture to meet our enterprise customers' strict security requirements around the world. It is a solution that we are very proud of, and it has helped us become the number one choice for enterprises and governments. In recent days, there has been a range of commentary, speculation, and misrepresentation regarding this solution and we want to take the opportunity to set the record straight. There is only one BlackBerry enterprise solution available to our customers around the world and it remains unchanged in all of the markets we operate in. RIM cooperates with all governments with a consistent standard and the same degree of respect. Any claims that we provide, or have ever provided, something unique to the government of one country that we have not offered to the governments of all countries, are unfounded. The BlackBerry enterprise solution was designed to preclude RIM, or any third party, from reading encrypted information under any circumstances since RIM does not store or have access to the encrypted data. RIM cannot accommodate any request for a copy of a customer's encryption key, since at no time does RIM, or any wireless network operator or any third party, ever possess a copy of the key. This means that customers of the BlackBerry enterprise solution can maintain confidence in the integrity of the security architecture without fear of compromise."

Article Tags:  reports, blackberry, company, india, situation, dubai, popular, appears, google, search, china, messages, engine, country, customers, mails, governments, allow, demands, security, service, according, services, messaging, monitor,