BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion is “optimistic” the company can resolve security demands from the Indian government regarding its popular smartphone.
According to Reuters, RIM vice-president Robert Crow said the Canadian firm’s negotiations with Indian officials are “a step in a long journey”.
India on Thursday issued a deadline of less than three weeks for RIM to resolve concerns over the security of its BlackBerry device, warning that the phone’s email and messenger service would be shut down by August 31 if no settlement is reached.
“Our message to RIM and service providers is that if they don’t come up with a technical solution by 31 August, then the home ministry will take a view and will shut down BlackBerry Messenger and business enterprises services,” a spokesperson for the ministry said.
Indian officials have been meeting to discuss the future of telecommunications companies in the country, starting with the BlackBerry manufacturer. Similar concerns appear set to be addressed with search giant Google and internet telephony firm Skype at a later date.
A senior Indian security official, who wished to remain anonymous, told Reuters: “Wherever there is a concern on grounds of national security the government will want access and every country has a right to lawful interference.
“We have concerns regarding [Google and Skype] services on grounds of national security and all those services which cannot be put to lawful interference.”
In a public statement addressed to its approximately 800 000 BlackBerry customers in the country, RIM said that the company “genuinely tries to be as cooperative as possible with governments in the spirit of supporting legal and national security requirements, while also preserving the lawful needs of citizens and corporations”.
RIM said that any negotiations over access to data would be “limited by four main principles”: that it was legal, that there would be “no greater access” to BlackBerry services than other services, that there would be no changes in the security for Enterprise customers, and it would not make “special deals for specific countries”.
Nick Jones, a senior analyst at Gartner, said there is uncertainty over whether India is objecting to the use of BlackBerry Enterprise Servers in the country, which afford companies and organisations a higher level of security than for individual customers.
Jones said it would be “exceedingly bad” for the Canadian manufacturer’s reputation if it was to change its security architecture to support requests from a government seeking to monitor customer information.
Further, BlackBerry messaging is not subject to the same encryption process as email on the device, and so “may be less secure and more open to lawful interception”.
“I believe that governments are being very naive about this,” Jones said. “If RIM is perceived as insecure, criminals and terrorists will just switch to more secure communication tools the government can’t intercept. There is a wide choice.
“Being able to read RIM traffic is likely only to catch technically unsophisticated criminals who are probably not the big risk in any case.” – guardian.co.uk