BlackBerry: Govt talks tough eve of meeting telecom operators

New Delhi, Aug 11 (PTI) Some services of BlackBerry
phones faced the threat of being blocked in India if the
telecom service providers do not address Government's security
concerns at a meeting here on Thursday.
"We will tell the service providers in categorical terms
that the government will allow them to offer only those
services which could be intercepted by the security agencies.
If any service cannot be intercepted, we will not allow them
to run such services in India," official sources said
Wednesday.
The Home Ministry has convened a meeting tomorrow with
Department of Telecommunications and service providers and is
expected to direct them to stop certain features which cannot
be accessed by security agencies.
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion(RIM) has nearly one
million subscribers in the country and it has a growing
market.
The sources further said the maker of BlackBerry phones,
Research in Motion (RIM), has conveyed to the operators that
services like email and voicemail can be intercepted by the
security agencies but no commitment has been given to services
like BlackBerry Messenger.
The sources said while the onus of giving access to
security agencies to monitor the information on these phones
lies with the service providers, the Home Ministry will ask
them which services were not accessible.
According to the licensing conditions, service providers
are liable to put in a mechanism allowing security agencies to
intercept any conversation or message of any subscriber
whenever required.
As telecom service providers like Airtel, Vodafone, RCom,
the Tatas and the government-run BSNL and MTNL are offering
BlackBerry services, it is the responsibility of these
operators to ensure that security agencies get access to all
services they offer.
Last week, BlackBerry made a fresh attempt to break the
logjam over its services in India by offering "metadata" and
relevant information to security agencies which will enable
them in lawful interception but failed to enthuse them.
RIM representatives explained that BlackBerry mobile
device sends the encrypted email, which is sent to BlackBerry
Enterprise Server (BES) located with the service provider.
BES decrypts messages and sends it to the email server of
the service provider where it remains stored in decrypted
form. Then it is pushed to the BlackBerry device in encrypted
form.
After some persuasion, the representatives agreed that
"they can provide the metadata of the message like Internet
Protocol address of BES and PIN and International Mobile
Equipment Identity of the BlackBerry mobile," sources said.
Metadata is loosely defined as data about data. It
provides information about a certain item's content like how
large the picture is, the colour depth, the image resolution,
when the image was created, and other data. A text document's
metadata may contain information about how long the document
is, who the author is, when the document was written, and a
short summary of the document.
However, sources said RIM, which has nearly one million
subscribers in India, failed to enthuse the security agencies
who want an uninterrupted access to the messaging services on
BlackBerry platform. PTI ACB
KAB