Mobile Phone Firms Deny Helping India Spy on the US-China Commission

After an allegedly secret memo was leaked by hackers, revealing that some major mobile phone manufacturers were aiding India spy on the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) in exchange for access to the Indian market, the companies came forward to deny the allegations.

Research in Motion (RIM), the company that develops BlackBerry devices, didn’t comment, but as we’ve seen yesterday, their internal policies dictate that they maintain “a consistent global standard for lawful access requirements that does not include special deals for specific countries.”

According to The Times of India, Apple also failed to release an official statement regarding the controversial memo, but Alan Hely, the company’s senior director of corporate communications, denied the accusations.

“I can deny that backdoor access was provided,” Hely said.

Nokia wasn’t too eager to provide details either, but also denied making such deals with the Indian government.

“The company takes the privacy of customers and their data seriously and is committed to comply with all applicable data protection and privacy laws,” a Nokia spokesperson said.

The entire incident comes after a hacker collective called the Lords of Dharamraja leaked a memo that allegedly contains some carefully guarded secrets of the Indian government and the country’s military.

“As of now, we start sharing with all our brothers and followers information from the Indian Militaty Intelligence servers, so far, we have discovered within the Indian Spy Programme source codes of a dozen software companies which have signed agreements with Indian TANCS programme and CBI,” the hackers wrote on Pastebin after they leaked the information.

While the Indian Military quickly came forward to state that the document is a forgery published with ill intent, Symantec representatives admitted that some of the information obtained by the hackers was accurate.

More exactly, they got their hands on the source code of a couple of Symantec enterprise products.