Apple, Nokia, RIM Provide Backdoor To Governments on their devices

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Leaked Memo Says Apple, Nokia, RIM Provide Backdoor To Governments

...so think again if you plan to use Bitcoin on your IPhone.

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/01/08/069204/leaked-memo-says-apple-provides-backdoor-to-governments
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/india/have-rim-nokia-apple-provided-indian-military-with-backdoor-access-to-cellular-comm/838

"In a tweet early this morning, cybersecurity researcher Christopher Soghoian pointed to an internal memo of India's Military Intelligence that has been liberated by hackers and posted on the Net. The memo suggests that, "in exchange for the Indian market presence" mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as "RINOA") have agreed to provide backdoor access on their devices. The Indian government then "utilized backdoors provided by RINOA" to intercept internal emails of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a U.S. government body with a mandate to monitor, investigate and report to Congress on 'the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship' between the U.S. and China. Manan Kakkar, an Indian blogger for ZDNet, has also picked up the story and writes that it may be the fruits of an earlier hack of Symantec. If Apple is providing governments with a backdoor to iOS, can we assume that they have also done so with Mac OS X?"

[buttcoin]

Indian government already has access to the cell carrier networks, not really sure why they need on the devices themselves.

[Litt]

Indian government already has access to the cell carrier networks, not really sure why they need on the devices themselves.

So that they can access the phone while it's working outside of Indian cell networks?

[niko]

Indian government already has access to the cell carrier networks, not really sure why they need on the devices themselves.

In case of RIM, data is encrypted between the device and RIM servers.  Not sure if this applies to all plans, but supposedly it is the case for "enterprise" and some medium-level personal plans.

[mb300sd]

Another reason to switch to android with a custom ROM...