[liberationtech] RIM Check

[Ronald Deibert]

Colleagues, the following project might be of interest to members of  
this list:

For Immediate Release

October 21, 2010

Information Warfare Monitor (Citizen Lab and SecDev Group) Announces  
RIM Monitoring Project

Recently a number of governments have threatened to ban Research in  
Motion's BlackBerry services if the company does not make encrypted  
BlackBerry data and other content available to state authorities . A  
major concern of these regimes is that BlackBerry data can be  
encrypted and routed through servers located outside of their  
jurisdictions. Unconfirmed reports have circulated that RIM has made  
data sharing agreements with India and Saudi Arabia and the United  
Arab Emirates. Other countries are also requesting the company locate  
data centres within their jurisdictions.

The RIM Check (https://rimcheck.org/) Web site is a research project  
designed to gather information on how traffic exits the BlackBerry  
network depending on the country in which the user is located. The  
findings from this project will be published and made publicly  
available.

The project is being conducted by the Information Warfare Monitor and  
the Web site is maintained by the (Citizen Lab at the Munk School of  
Global Affairs, University of Toronto).

The RIM Check project is inspired by a broad need to monitor the  
activities of private sector actors that own and operate cyberspace,  
particularly as they come under increasing pressure to cooperate with  
governments on national surveillance and censorship laws, policies,  
and requests.  Decisions taken by private sector actors, often at the  
behest of governments seeking access to their data or assistance  
blocking Web sites, can have major consequences for human rights.   
These decisions can lack transparency and public accountability.  This  
project is meant to address that lack of transparency.

The project is exploratory in nature and meant to test hypotheses.  
Researchers of the Information Warfare Monitor project will analyze  
the data collected from the Web site over an extended period of time.   
Other methods are in development to supplement data collected through  
the RIM Check web site. Field research and policy analysis will also  
be employed to complement the technical collection activities.  The  
Information Warfare Monitor will also be analyzing for evidence of  
content filtering on Blackberry devices.

For further reading see:

Ron Deibert, Cyberspace Confidential, August 6 2010, Globe and Mail

Danny O'Brien, Why governments don't need RIM to crack the BlackBerry,  
August 3, 2010, Committee to Protect Journalists

Full RIM customer statement on BlackBerry security issues

About the Information Warfare Monitor

The Information Warfare Monitor is public-private venture between two  
Canadian institutions: the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global  
Affairs, University of Toronto and The SecDev Group, an operational  
think tank based in a Ottawa (Canada).  The Information Warfare  
Monitor is an advanced research activity tracking the emergence of  
cyberspace as a strategic domain. We are an independent research  
effort. Our mission is to build and broaden the evidence base  
available to scholars, policy makers, and others. We aim to educate  
and inform.

Inquiries: r.deibert at utoronto.ca

Ronald J. Deibert
Director, The Citizen Lab
Munk School of Global Affairs
University of Toronto
r.deibert at utoronto.ca
http://deibert.citizenlab.org/
twitter.com/citizenlab




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