Apple, RIM and Nokia Allegedly Helping India Spy On United States

A recently leaked memo reveals that American and Canadian based company’s Apple, Research in Motion and Nokia may have helped the government of India spy on U.S. agencies in order to receive larger shares of the overall Indian cell phone market.

Originally reported by Indian blogger Manan Kakkar for ZDNet the report says officials in the country were given backdoor access to mobile device data. While the company’s have not reacted to the claim it was also confirmed by cybersecurity researcher Christopher Soghoian.

While the leaked information was likely used for a variety of reasons one such example surfaced in which the Indian government allegedly used those backdoors to steal emails from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a group who’s main focus is the monitoring and investigating of national security implications within the US-China economic relationship.

According to reports Indian governmental officials were most interested in Chinese cybersecurity threats. Kakkar believes that information obtained through backdoor programs may have in fact given them the information they needed for an earlier hack of Symantec by Indian hacker collective the Lords of Dharamraja.

ComputerWorld goes on to reveal even more inform about the potential hacks and reasoning behind Apple, RIM and Nokia’s decision to move forward with backdoor device access.

Here’s a partial screen grab of the leaked document:

In the meantime representatives from all three tech company’s have denied their involvement in any type of backdoor access program for their mobile devices.

Do you think it is wrong for North American company’s to give backdoor access for mobile data to other countries in exchange for a larger market share in those regions?