After engaging for more than a month, the government on Thursday talked tough with Canada?s Research In Motion (RIM), the manufacturers and patent holders of BlackBerry, giving it a 19-day deadline to meet the requirements of lawful interception or face ban on some of its key services.
Home secretary GK Pillai, who earlier in the day met officials of the Department of Telecommunications, central security agencies and BSNL asked DoT to inform RIM that if lawful interception was not provided to law enforcement agencies by August 31, the two services, BlackBerry Enterprises Services and BlackBerry Messenger Services would be discontinued.
Said a home ministry statement: ?The meeting asked DoT to convey to service providers and RIM that BES and Messenger services be made accessible to law enforcement Agencies (LEA) by August 31. If a technical solution is not found by August 31, government will review the position and take steps to block these two services. As of now, voicemail, SMS and BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS) have been made available to the LEA.?
The tough stance comes after reports that RIM has agreed to give the authorities in Saudi Arabia codes for BMS after being threatened with a ban. The United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Algeria are also seeking access to the codes to enable real-time lawful interception.
The subscriber base of all smartphones in India is 5 lakh, of which BlackBerries constitute a major chunk. Major operators like Bharti-Airtel, Vodafone-Essar, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices, BSNL and MTNL provide BlackBerry services, but the first two have the bulk of customers. Low subscriber base is said to be one of the reasons for BlackBerry not keen on setting up a server in India.
Before the meeting, a RIM India official called on home minister P Chidambaram.
After discussions across several months, the matter was dropped. Officials said that a view was taken then that a ban would seem retrograde and pressure on RIM be brought at regular intervals to make them comply with the demand. However, after the Mumbai terror attacks in November 2008, the security scenario changed drastically. With a change of guard at the home ministry, the government is in no mood to give much wiggle room to RIM.
?If you make a product, you have to provide the solution and comply with licence requirements,? said an official who is part of the talks with RIM. Last November, the government decided to disconnect 25 million mobile connections on handsets without IMEI number, a unique 15-digit code through which security agencies can trace a phone user. Last month, it came out with stringent guidelines for telecom equipment imports to check malware.
Unlike other manufacturers like Nokia and Apple, RIM operates its own network through secure services located in Canada and other countries, such as Britain.
Last week, RIM did make attempts to break the logjam over its services by offering ?metadata? and other relevant information to security agencies which will enable them to lawfully intercept communication on such phones. But it was not accepted since the interception could not be on a real-time basis. RIM representatives explained that BlackBerry mobile device sends encrypted emails, which is sent to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server located with the service provider. BES decrypts messages and sends it to the email server of the service provider where it remains stored in decrypted form.
Globally too, BlackBerry has run into problems with several governments. The German government has urged staffers not to use the BlackBerry and several ministries have banned them. The European Union Commission this month rejected the BlackBerry in favour of Apple?s iPhone and HTC?s smartphones.
