This just in – the much of the Saudia Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are gunning for private blackberry information. And if they don’t get it, they’re threatening to cut all messenger services in their countries.

RIM is in negotiations as we speak. But even if successful, these negotiations could  jeopardize the growth of RIM, the Canada’s most important tech exporter. It could also set a horrible precedent, breaking the super-secure network to potentially hostile government scrutiny.

As negotiations progress the list of states who say they intend to review their policy and potentially add their name to the list of countries willing to cut down the blackberry community is growing.

In addition to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, India is in talks with the company over gaining access, and both Lebanon and Algeria, according to a newspaper report, are reviewing the situation and might soon also might join the list. India in particular has pointed to the casualties caused by the terrorist attack in 2008 in Mumbai and when militants used wireless phones to direct attacks. They say it all comes down to national security and want to be able to monitor Blackberry traffic.

But many feel there’s a lot more at stake than monitoring the wireless emails of select terrorists. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis’ summed it up in a recent Wall Street Journal article:

“Everything on the internet is encrypted. This is not a BlackBerry-only issue. If they can’t deal with the internet, they should shut it off.”

For Lazaridis such a move to monitor the electronic communications would significantly undermine the world’s e-commerce. The potential for abuse would be enormous and goes to the heart of what the internet is all about. Free access to information and communications of that information for all.

But Lazaridis and the RIM team aren’t the only one kicking up a fight on this one. While the Canadian government is coming down firmly on the side of RIM, more importantly, the issue has come to the attention of Hillary Clinton who’s already indicated an interest in hashing it out with any governments eager to get their hands on private data. Turns out business isn’t the only fan of the blackberry. They’re also been widely introduced to the US military. And when the US military is concerned, watch out.

Here’s hoping RIM will win these negotiations and stand firm. Else it’ll be a very slippery slope that most of us (with the exception of the police) probably don’t really want to go down.