Does Tifatul's Threat Mean Something or Nothing?

Smartphone maker BlackBerry on Monday said it would start filtering web services in Indonesia after the government threatened curbs on the company if it failed to block access to pornographic sites.

Research in Motion (RIM) said in a statement that it had been in talks with its partners and the government on the matter and “continues to make it a top priority to implement satisfactory technical solutions as soon as possible”.

Communications and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring reiterated his stand on Monday, saying that the Canadian company risked having its licence revoked.

“If in the next two weeks, RIM fails to comply with the order by January 21, we will revoke its permit,” Sembiring told reporters.

The ministry’s spokesman Gatot Dewabrata said earlier that officials would meet RIM representatives on January 17 to discuss the matter. The row is the latest in a series of controversies that RIM has faced, as several governments including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and India have complained about difficulties monitoring communications via the smartphones.

Indonesia’s threats meanwhile have prompted a wave of angry protest on microblogging site Twitter. There are more than two million BlackBerry users in Indonesia, a country of 240 million people seen as a major emerging market for information technology and mobile communications. It is also the world’s fourth most-populous country and has about 40 million Internet users, according to Internet World Stats.

[Source : AFP]