Blackberry agrees to sort out India’s security issues

Jul 29, 2010 |

Correspondent

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July 29: After the Union home ministry’s tough stance on security concerns related to Blackberry mobile services, the makers of BlackBerry — Research in Motion (RIM) — have given an assurance to the ministry that it will soon address the demand raised by security agencies on allowing them to monitor emails and SMSes.

The government on Thursday said the Canadian service provider and security agencies would be on the “same page”. “BlackBerry has assured the ministry of home affairs that the issue of monitoring of the BlackBerry will be sorted out soon...I am sure we will soon be on the same page and our concerns will be addressed,” the special secretary (Internal Security) in the MHA, Mr U.K. Bansal, said.

The government had warned that the popular smartphone company may have to shut down operations in India if it’s data services did not comply with formats that can be monitored by security and intelligence agencies.

Apart from allowing access to Indian security agencies to track conversations, emails and messages of terror suspects, the governement also wants a BlackBerry server in India.

The smartphone’s server is based in Canada where the encryption level is very high and extremely difficult to crack. However, the company has been resisting the move. The home ministry had recently told the department of telecommunications (DoT) to convey to the Canadian service provider that it will have to address its security-related issues by allowing monitoring facility in India.

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