The Centre will ensure that no communication or information technology poses any threat to national security, Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot said on Saturday, referring to the BlackBerry controversy.
“Action is necessary as some of the services of Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of the smartphone, have implications for our safety and security, particularly when we are fighting terrorism. National security is paramount,” he said here.
“We do not want any situation in which a technology can harm our internal security. For these reasons, the Home Ministry is considering a wide range of issues from time to time.” He hoped that the Canada-based RIM would cooperate with the law enforcement agencies and address their legitimate concerns.
The Centre had to take certain measures if a technology had implications for internal security, and the issue of BlackBerry services was one of them. “It is not an issue of imposing a ban; what we want is cooperation from them for the sake of security issues,” Mr. Pilot said.
The government has set an August 31 deadline for RIM and telecom operators offering its services to address its security concerns, failing which, it warned, it will shut down BlackBerry Enterprise Services and BlackBerry Messenger Services.
As for telemarketing calls and messages, Mr. Pilot said they had become a nuisance, and the government would soon come out with some kind of regulation.
“There are around 65 crore telecom users in the country, and these SMS and calls are an invasion of privacy, therefore a holistic view should be taken and strong steps initiated to address this.”
“Regulators, service providers and marketing services need to come together to make stringent laws on the subject… I believe that very soon some steps will be taken. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has even held a meeting and discussed the issue with all stakeholders, and soon something concrete will be done to check this menace.”
