BlackBerry open to security interception
Blackberry users don’t have much to worry right now about the smart phone services being shut down in India. Government sources said that Blackberry services will continue in India as the maker of BlackBerry — Research in Motion (RIM) — has conveyed to the Indian authorities that its voice and email facilities can be intercepted by
security agencies in the country. While these services will be allowed to continue, the sources pointed out that some of the other services like business to business or corporate services might be blocked if they cannot be intercepted by Indian security agencies. “If the company does not provide us access to some of their services, those services might be blocked. The other services can continue since voice and email is interceptable,” an official said.
Indian authorities, unlike the UAE, are also not setting any deadline for resolving the concerns raised with RIM maintaining that the issue cannot be resolved within weeks. There are about one million subscribers of BlackBerry registered with different operators.
While India has been asking the makers of BlackBerry to set up a server in India, sources pointed out that such a move may be futile since Indian authorities do not possess a copy of the encryption key. The RIM had said recently that the security architecture for RIM’s enterprise customers is based on a symmetric key system whereby customers create their own key and only they possess the copy of the encryption.”RIM does not possess a master key nor does any back door exist in the system that would allow RIM or any third party to gain an unauthorised access to the key or corporate data,” the company had said.
Post new comment