Centre volte-face: no Blackberry security threat
Speaking to newspersons on the sidelines of an industry conference, DoT secretary, Siddhartha Behura, said, “There is no threat from Blackberry services”. Interestingly, the DoT had earlier, on the advice of the home ministry pulled up companies like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, and Reliance Communications for starting the services without the government’s prior approval. The three companies currently provide Blackberry services.
On the same grounds it had withheld permission to Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) when it sought to start the services.
However, on Wednesday Behura said that, “‘there is no permission needed for starting value added services. We have not given permission to anybody, we have not disallowed anybody”. However, he added that security agencies have raised certain issues and talks are on regarding them.
His comments assumes significance because not only did the DoT write letters to TTSL for not starting the services without the provision for legal interception, it also held a series of meetings with telecom companies and the Canadian firm, Research In Motion (RIM), which provides the technology for Blackberry services, to provide a solution. The talks till date have, officially not produced any results.
Despite RIM’s assurances to work with the mobile operators currently providing the
Be the first to comment.
