Spelling trouble for more than one million users of BlackBerry in India, the Centre has warned the Canadian service provider that if it does not allow the facility to monitor email and SMS, it will have to shut down operations in the country.
The government has said the makers of BlackBerry — Research in Motion (RIM) — have to address the security concerns by offering the monitoring facility.
“If they don't follow our guidelines, we will have no option but to ask them to stop their operations in India,” a senior official said.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has asked the Department of Telecommunications to tell the company in no uncertain terms that its email and other data services must comply with formats that could be monitored by security and intelligence agencies.
The Ministry made it clear that RIM was addressing the security concerns of several other countries, including the United States.
The government also wants a BlackBerry server in India to track the messages, but the company has been resisting the move.
RIM version
RIM says the messages are encrypted. The smartphone's server is based in Canada where the level of encryption is very high and extremely difficult to crack.
And any message going through a Canadian server is encrypted and cannot be accessed by intelligence agencies in India.
