BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) is ready to allow Indian authorities access to the emails and messages of its most high-profile corporate customers, according to a ministry official in the country.
The secure communications of India’s 400 000 BlackBerry owners could soon be lawfully accessed by government officials, the unnamed interior minister said, adding that RIM is preparing for “providing live access” to customers’ encrypted servers.
“They have in principle agreed to provide us recorded data from their servers,” India’s the Mint business newspaper quoted an unnamed Indian ministry official as saying.
“Now they have assured us that they will discuss the issue first among themselves and find a way to meet our demands. Later, they would be providing live access to BES [BlackBerry Enterprise Server],” the official told the paper.
However, the threat of a blackout for the 400 000 BlackBerry owners in India still looms after months of terse, but largely fruitless, negotiations between RIM and India’s telecoms ministry.
The Delhi government has opened up a front against Google, Skype, and the many mobile carriers operating in the country, citing security fears over the level of encryption employed by the companies. Officials suspect the culprits of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, in which 116 people died, used encrypted BlackBerry devices.
RIM today said it is “pleased with the progress” being made in negotiations with India, which it described as an “important market” for the company.
The company added that any “lawful access” negotiations would abide by four 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 “specific deals for specific customers”.
Last month RIM escaped a ban on the BlackBerry communications of its 500 000 customers in the United Arab Emirates, while Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Lebanon have also raised concerns about the Canadian company’s security policies.
The chief concern of India, which is the world’s second-largest cellphone market behind China, surrounds communication passed between corporate BlackBerry devices using Enterprise servers. Organisations using BlackBerry Enterprise Servers (BES) host their own server and encryption key — which only it can use to unscramble encrypted emails and messages — thereby offering a higher level of security.
RIM has publicly remained defiant, insisting that it would not offer special deals to specific countries and that security measures for its Enterprise customers would not be compromised.
Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts that there will be more than 600 000 BlackBerry sales in India this year and that India’s smartphone market will have reached approximately 12-million – a figure forecast to grow to 40-million by the end of 2015.
The increasing popularity of smartphones running Google’s Android operating system has eroded RIM’s grip on the corporate communications market in 2010. RIM’s most recent smartphone release, the Bold 9780, has failed to make an impression on consumers or traders since its launch in October. – guardian.co.uk