In talks with BlackBerry,govt looks at Skype & Co

RIM has assured technical solutions o our concerns,say official sources

A day after the government set an August 31 deadline for service providers to ensure that BlackBerry Enterprise Services (BES) and the BlackBerry Messenger Services (BMS) are made accessible to law enforcement agencies,Research in Motion,makers of BlackBerry smartphones,on Friday assured the government that they would come up with necessary technical solutions shortly.

They said that they are working on some technical solutions. Once they get back to us with their proposals,our technical people will evaluate the solutions and see whether they are workable or not, sources in the government said. RIM,the sources said,has not sought more time from the government.

Earlier in the day,RIM Vice-President Robert E Crowe met Union Home Secretary G K Pillai in North Block. Emerging from the 30-minute meeting,Crowe declined to divulge details. I am optimistic was all he said.

Story continues below this ad

But even as BlackBerry smartphones,currently used by over a million people in India,continue to be embroiled in this controversy over security issues,sources told The Indian Express that a host of other services,like Gmail,Skype,several Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services and several data-cards like Tata Photon,too have raised security concerns many of these services cannot be monitored.

We have taken up these issues with the respective companies. Some of them have already provided us with solutions to make their services interceptable by security agencies,some are in the process of doing so. But yes,serious security concerns over many of these services still remain and we are dealing with all of them simultaneously,a Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) source said.

Meanwhile,RIM,in a statement,said it maintains a consistent global standard for lawful access requirements that does not include special deals for specific countries. The company said it has drawn a firm line by insisting that any capabilities it provides to carriers for lawful access purposes has to be limited to the strict context of lawful access and national security requirements as governed by the countrys judicial oversight and rules of law. It stated that it truly has no ability to provide its customers encryption keys.

Also driving RIMs position is the fact that strong encryption is a fundamental commercial requirement for any country to attract and maintain international business anyway and similarly strong encryption is currently used pervasively in traditional VPNs on both wired and wireless networks in order to protect corporate and government communications, it stated.