RIM to Filter Web Traffic of Indonesian BlackBerry Users

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) agreed to filter the Web traffic of its users in Indonesia in order to block any adult oriented websites, as required by the country's laws.

In 2008, Indonesia's Parliament passed legislation that requires Internet service providers to block access to inappropriate adult websites of a sexual nature.

At the time, the law was viewed as proof of increasing religious influence in the politics of the country with the largest population of Muslims in the world.

According to The Age, Indonesia's Communications and Information Minister Tiffatul Sembiring has put pressure on ISPs to enforce the Internet filtering legislation since the middle of last year and asked RIM to do the same.

The Canadian smartphone manufacturer has around 2 million customers in the Asian country, which is viewed as one of its fastest growing markets.

"RIM is fully committed to working with Indonesia's carriers to put in place a prompt, compliant filtering solution for BlackBerry subscribers in Indonesia as soon as possible," the company said in a statement.

The government also suggested that RIM install a local server so it can satisfy lawful interception requests, but the company says that isn't necessary.

The smartphone manufacturer has increasingly come under pressure from governments around the world to open its BlackBerry communications to authorities.

Last year it faced bans in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia because national security agencies could not tap into the secure encrypted traffic.

RIM managed to satisfy the requests of the two countries, but did not provide any details about how exactly this was done.

India is also pressuring the company to provide lawful interception solutions for its BlackBerry data services, but the company claims it can only do it for BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

That's because BlackBerry corporate email traffic is encrypted between devices and the BlackBerry Enterprise Servers (BES) operated by private companies and RIM doesn't have the encryption keys.