July 28: The government has said the makers of BlackBerry — Research in Motion (RIM) — have to address its security concern by offering monitoring facility, else the popular smartphone company will have to shut its shop in India.
The ministry of home affairs has asked the department of telecommunication to tell the Canadian service provider in no uncertain terms that its email and other data services must comply with formats that can be monitored by security and intelligence agencies.
The MHA made it clear that RIM has been addressing security concerns of several other countries, including the United States, where it operates and therefore, there is no justification to not comply the same in India.
“If they don’t follow our guidelines, we will have no option but to ask them to stop their operations in India,” an official said. The smartphone is used by nearly a million customers in India.
Government also wants a blackberry server in India but the company has been delaying the move. Once the server is in India, it will be easy to track the messages. BlackBerry says the messages are encrypted. The smartphone’s server is based in Canada where the encryption level is very high and extremely difficult to crack.