India is wasting its time chasing BlackBerry

You're a Delhi-based wannabe terrorist needing to communicate with your handlers. What do you do? Invisible-ink notes are passe, as are carrier pigeons. You will, of course, use electronic options. 

Like e-mail. Walk into a cyber cafe, log into a G-mail or Yahoo account. Don't use an account in your own name. And don't send e-mail. Simply read instructions left for you in an unsent mail, saved as a draft in your account. Then, to reply, just edit the unsent e-mail, and save it back as a draft. If e-mail isn't travelling, it can't be intercepted. 

Or, like SMS. Get a prepaid SIM card with fake identity, use it for a month, then dump it. Or make good-old phone calls using the SIM card, and dump it. 

There are other options. And they have a common thread: Anonymity. You do not use your own identity, and you use a mode that is virtually untraceable. 

Which is why a terrorist's choice is not a BlackBerry -- a device developed by Canada's Research in Motion (RIM) that has now become a matter of concern for Indian security establishment -- that is linked to his identity. Nor is a post-paid BlackBerry connection as disposable as a prepaid SIM card. Sure, you can get post-paid mobile connections too on fake identities, but because there is billing involved, valid addresses are required. 

That's not the only reason the terrorist would be wary of using a BlackBerry. First, he's not really sure how secure the mail is, once an agency is onto him. The mail is routed through servers in North America, and the US National Security Agency reportedly has the technology to crack encrypted mail in a few hours - with or without help from RIM. 

More worrying for the terrorist, not all of the mail is encrypted. The headers, including the "to" and "from" e-mail addresses, are plain text -- else the internet would not be able to accept the e-mail for delivery. 

And finally, the mail doesn't stay encrypted all the way. When it gets delivered to an external e-mail system such as G-mail or corporate mail, it gets decrypted -- else the recipient wouldn't be able to read it. 

The exception is when you're not using a G-mail or a company mail ID, but are sending pure BlackBerry mail. That's not merely one sent between two RIM devices, but where both "from" and "to" are BlackBerry IDs. That's rare, but here's how it works. 

Your RIM device would usually be associated with your official address, say ram.rao@maruti.com. But you'd also have a BlackBerry e-mail address, like ramrao@airtel.blackberry.com, which you'd use to originate a BlackBerry-only mail. Even then, RIM would record to whom the mail was sent by and when.