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Smartphone message monitoring may be necessary for governments, but it should not turn to mere snooping, says Salil Tripathi

After China, India. The battle between state power and corporate power has taken a new turn in India, and at stake is the false mutual exclusivity between freedom of expression and freedom from fear.

The Indian Government has reached an agreement with BlackBerry manufacturers Research in Motion, allowing the state limited access to date from the mobile devices.

India’s concerns are not entirely out of place. Anyone who saw the harrowing documentary about the terrorist attacks carried out in Mumbai by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba on 26 Nov 2008 would have noticed the ease with which the terrorists communicated with their masterminds in Pakistan, using satellite phones. Their handlers were able to pass on information Indian broadcasters were providing — not always accurate — to the men on the ground.

No country would want to live through such an experience again, and India believes that BlackBerry’s enterprise server and messaging services are so well disguised, that its intelligence agencies cannot intercept the messages they want to monitor. India’s next targets are net-based phone systems -Skype and Google.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia too, have sought restrictions on BlackBerry. It is a fair question to ask if India, the world’s most populous democracy, wants to keep such company. But in making such demands, these countries are not alone.

The very seamlessness and instantaneity which links us with colleagues, friends and family around the world also links criminal gangs and terrorists. While not acknowledged openly, western intelligence agencies maintain surveillance over electronic communication. Counter-terrorism strategies require that. No politician wants to be caught saying he could have intercepted communication that led to a terrorist attack, but did not, out of concerns over privacy.

Here, the logical clash between the right to seek, receive, and impart information clashes with the right to privacy. And within that mix, add the state’s obligation to protect lives. Nowhere, in this equation, is there any clarity about the role of a company.

Companies do not sign or ratify human rights treaties; states do. Companies have an obligation to comply with the law; states have the obligation to ensure that the laws that they enact are consistent with the human rights standards adopted universally. It is odd to expect businesses to run foreign policy. While they can get it right — as Google does with China — they can get it spectacularly wrong, as when they interfere with legitimate government functions or end up being complicit with abuses others commit.  An apt example is junior mining companies in conflict zones where state authority does not run.

It is hard to trust the state given its pathetic record in protecting individual liberties.

Today, India wants access to messages exchanged by terrorists. Tomorrow, it might want access to messages among NGOs, commercial rivals of state-owned companies, newspapers, indeed private individuals sharing material the politicians consider ‘sensitive’ or ‘pornographic’. India’s dismal record in protecting freedom of speech does not inspire confidence. Its constitution places many restrictions on freedom of expression, and permits anyone claiming offence to seek bans on this or that film, play, or book. Why, a mobile phone operator was sued because someone sent ethnic jokes about a community as a text message, and someone was offended. Indians have elevated the culture of taking offense into an art form. There is no guarantee that it won’t extend its tendency to censor to other areas which have nothing to do with security.

Ultimately, this requires an international solution, where countries adopt a liberal governance model that does not restrict free flow of information that includes commercial, academic, literary, and yes, even what some might consider repugnant or pornographic, except where human and not national security is threatened.

It is hard to trust governments; but it is more complicated to have Google, Skype or RIM deciding foreign policy.

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Last year’s “Twitter Revolution” in nearby Iran accentuated this fear, as most of the opponents to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed election victory organised themselves and their protests using Internet and smartphone communications. As such, the continued availability of secure communications to hundreds of thousands in the UAE was deemed an unacceptable risk by the authorities. An attempt was duly made to regain the upper hand, as within days of the Iranian election the UAE’s government-owned telecoms giant, Etisalat, strongly encouraged its BlackBerry subscribers to download a “performance enhancement” patch. However, following user complaints that the patch was decreasing the battery life of their handsets and causing them to overheat, the patch was soon exposed as spyware, with BlackBerry’s manufacturer — Research in Motion — confirming that it would allow Etisalat to spy on all of its customers’ BlackBerry data. Since then, the government has had to sit back and watch in discomfort as effectively anonymous Blackberry users swap messages and stories, many of which criticize the country’s rulers and seek to highlight injustices.

Notably, hundreds of BlackBerry chain messages are being forwarded amongst UAE nationals on a daily basis, mostly in Arabic. A good chunk of these are political in content, with some of the more trivial messages poking fun at various sheikhs, while more serious messages discuss the financial and sexual scandals associated with serving ministers, judges, diplomats, and other officials. Over the past few months there have been a number of particularly sensitive topics that have gone viral on UAE BlackBerrys, with users chipping in with their comments, often under the banner of a pseudonym. These include a heated discussion of the January 2010 acquittal of Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Issa from all torture and sodomy charges levelled against him by his victims, despite video evidence. There has also been much discussion of the March 2010 death of Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Ahmed — the second of Sheikh Zayed’s sons to have died in an aircraft-related accident within two years — and sustained criticism of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, both for his personality and for his stewardship of Dubai’s struggling economy. Most interestingly, at least from an organizational perspective, have been the Blackberry-fuelled attempts to co-ordinate public protests in the UAE against the admission of Israeli ministers into the country, petrol price hikes, and other controversial matters.

With the ban, the UAE authorities have stopped this specific avenue of dissent in its tracks, or at least will do so when the ban begins in October. However, by taking this decision the UAE’s population will yet again be denied a safety valve for criticism and free expression, and this will likely have serious medium term consequences, as opponents inevitably seek out alternative outlets. Moreover the ban will have a serious impact on the UAE’s international reputation as an aspiring oasis of economic liberalisation and as a regional business hub, not least in the eyes of those multinationals with bases and staff operating out of the country. The UAE’s fear will also spread fast, as similarly conservative regimes wake up to threat that is developing within their borders. Saudi Arabia has already announced it will follow suit, and other Gulf states will also react.

But where there is fear there is also opportunity, with Qatar having already stated that it has no intentions to curtail BlackBerry use. The plucky little gas-rich emirate, with its history of maverick foreign policies has clearly sensed a chance to demonstrate its relative dynamism and openness compared to the antiquated regimes across its borders. The biggest beneficiary of the ban will, however, be Research in Motion itself, with its customers in those Middle Eastern states that do not cut BlackBerry services likely to place increasing value on the security and privacy of their handsets.

Dr Christopher Davidson’s latest book is Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success
www.christopherdavidson.net

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