Fall in line by Aug 31 or wind up Msngr services: Govt to RIM

New Delhi, Aug 12 (PTI) Stepping up the pressure on
BlackBerry mobile phone services, the Indian government
Thursday asked the phone-makers Research In Motion as well as
telecom operators to provide a technical solution by August 31
or face ban.
In a letter to the Department of Telecom Secretary P
J Thomas, India's Home Secretary G K Pillai asked him to
convey to the operators and Canada-based RIM that a technical
solution to make available lawful interception of BlackBerry
Enterprise Services (BES) and BlackBerry Messenger Services
(BBM) by August 31 or its services will be blocked.
The letter was sent after a meeting chaired by Pillai in
which representatives of security agencies, Telecom Department
and top brass of state-owned BSNL and MTNL were present.
According to a Union Home Ministry spokesman, "the
meeting today asked DoT to convey to service providers and RIM
that the BES and messanger services be made accessible to
Legal Enforcement Agencies (LEA) and find a technical
solution by August 31.
"If a technical solution is not found by August 31,
government will review the position and take steps to block
these two services. As of now voicemail, SMS and Blackberry
Internet Services (BIS) have been made available to the LEA,"
the spokesman said.
Thursday's discussion was aimed at finalising the
government strategy towards BlackBerry phone which is facing
the threat of being blocked in the country if telecom service
providers do not address government's security concerns.
Ahead of the meeting, a top official of RIM, which has
nearly one million subscribers in the country and has a
growing market, made a courtsey call on Home Minister P
Chidambaram.
Last week, BlackBerry had 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 to lawfully intercept communication on such phones
but it failed to enthuse them.
RIM representatives explained that BlackBerry mobile
device sends encrypted emails, 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.
UAE had recently banned Blackberry services. PTI ACB
RDM


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