You may be aware that Research In Motion is having a spot of bother over security issues concerning BlackBerry service in certain countries due to security concerns and at one point back in August, BlackBerry was banned in Saudi Arabia for a time but eventually struck a deal to unban BlackBerry but was followed by a ban threat from Kuwait.

However according to an article over on Cnet and by way of the Wall Street Journal, RIM is still having difficulty in India as apparently Indian Home Secretary G. K. Pillai has said of the threat to ban BlackBerry in India unless concerns over security issues aren’t met by the end of January, that said deadline date is rather a target that a firm deadline.

Research In Motion has stated several time before that they do not have the ability to deliver encryption keys for BlackBerry Enterprise servers and that individual companies which use the service manage those keys.

Since August, RIM has been working with officials of the government of India to find a solution although RIM has said they have not compromised their core security features and haven’t struck any special deals with the countries that have threatened a ban.

Many businesses and government agencies opt to use BlackBerry because of its tight security on devices and email service; however Middle Eastern governments believe they need to monitor communications to combat the treat of terrorism.

I can understand the need to combat terrorism, but does that mean governments have to adopt a Big Brother stance and monitor smartphone user’s communications? Wouldn’t that be seen as an infringement on privacy? If smartphone users were to have their communications monitored would those users stop using mobile phones?

Surely if terrorists believe that a government is monitoring mobile communication then they will simply find another way so they won’t be monitored. So should the Indian Government block BlackBerry Service or should they simply find another way of dealing with the possible threat of terrorism, and as terrorism happens the world over does this mean that every smartphone user should have their communications monitored?