14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers have launched a project to map RIM's global network, in order to determine if the company has installed BlackBerry Internet servers in other countries.
Dubbed RIM CHECK, the project is a joint effort between the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto and The SecDev Group.
It is a response to the secrecy surrounding RIM's agreements with foreign governments known to have asked for access to decrypted BlackBerry communications.
Several countries, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), India and Saudi Arabia have threatened to ban BlackBerry data services this year, citing national security reasons.
The United Arab Emirates was amongst the first nations to say that sending data in encrypted form directly to servers located outside of its jursidiction is unacceptable.
The country's telecommunications authority (TRA) announced in August that BlackBerry Messaging and Email will be banned beginning with October 11.
However, at the beginning of the month, the authority backed down and said that BlackBerry data services are now compliant with national security regulations.
"The TRA would like to acknowledge the positive engagement and collaboration of Research In Motion (RIM) in reaching this regulatory compliant outcome," an official statement read.
This turn of events led people to speculate that RIM has agreed to install a BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) server inside the country, but the company declined to comment on the agreement.
With the exception of enterprise email, the encryption of BlackBerry communications is done between devices and RIM's own servers, which according to some reports, are located in Canada.
The Citizen Lab researchers want to get to the bottom of this and ask BlackBerry users to help them determine if RIM caved to pressures from foreign governments.
This involves users accessing rimcheck.org from their device. The page automatically records the user agent and the IP address through which it received the request.
This is correlated with additional information, such as location and carrier, which users can submit through a form. The results will be announced when sufficient data has been gathered.
"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," the researchers say.