BlackBerry impasse: Govt. stands firm on BES

January 31, 2011 06:30 pm | Updated November 28, 2021 09:44 pm IST - New Delhi

The government on Monday said it will “insist” that Canadian-manufacturer of Blackberry provides solution to interception of Enterprise Mail, deadline for which ends on Monday.

Noting that a decision would be taken soon on whether to allow the BlackBerry Enterprise Mail or not, Home Minister P. Chidambaram said he expected that Research-in-Motion (RIM), manufacturer of the smartphones, would be able to find some solution.

“I think a decision will be taken today by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Telecom Ministry. I am not yet been briefed on the development in the last few days.

“As I said, like they have given us a solution to the Messenger service, we will insist that they give us the solution for the enterprise service too,” Mr. Chidambaram told reporters after presenting monthly report of his Ministry.

BlackBerry had been given time till Monday to give a solution to the real time interception of its enterprise mail, but sources indicated that it could be extended by another fortnight or a month.

The comments from the Minister came in the backdrop of BlackBerry makers saying that providing solution to access its enterprise mail service is “not possible” and asserting that the issue was not unique to them and has to be dealt at an industry level.

“There is no possibility of us providing any kind of a solution. There is no solution, there are no keys to be handed...It’s not possible to do so because the keys of the service are in possession of the corporate enterprises,” RIM Vice-President (Industry, Government and University Relations) Robert E. Crow had said earlier.

Security agencies have been demanding access to all BlackBerry services as part of efforts to fight militancy and security threats over the Internet and through telephone communications.

RIM encrypts emails as they travel between a BlackBerry device and its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).

Earlier this month, RIM had said that it has delivered the technology to monitor contents on its messenger service (BBM) and had asked the government to issue a directive to the operators to connect to its new automated service.

This new service will automatically render lawfully intercepted BlackBerry Messenger messages in a format readable by Indian agencies.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.