The Home Ministry of India has asked telecom operators to halt certain BlackBerry services until an approved monitoring system that will allow the government to intercept and decrypt messages sent between BlackBerry devices and the secure network they run on is put into place.
The department of telecommunications (DoT) and Research in Motion have been going back and forth with proposed solutions to India’s security concerns for the past several weeks without coming to a general consensus and thus, the government has issued temporary ban on all PIN messaging, BIS email, and BES email.
Sources say that RIM has asked that the be given until the end of the month to address the security concerns. BlackBerry service is still working right now, however, the heat is on for RIM. India represents way too big an opportunity for RIM not to come up with an acceptable solution.
We aren’t going to run through the complete play by play, however, to make a long story short, Research in Motion still hasn’t adequately addressed India’s department of telecommunications (DoT) concerns about security on the BlackBerry and thus faces a potential ban in the world’s second largest country.
The DoT wants a monitoring solution that will allow them to read the encrypted messages sent between BlackBerry devices. RIM’s solution addressed BlackBerry to Internet communication, however, BlackBerry to BlackBerry messages are still encrypted. RIM had been given a 15 day deadline to come up with a solution, however, RIM and the DoT failed to come a consensus. Both parties decided to reconvene again on April 21st.
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by Robb Dunewood on March 25, 2008 · 1 comment
Remember a couple of weeks ago when we talked about how India may ban the BlackBerry, then followed up a few days later and said the the ban appeared to be off? Well, the Indian ban on BlackBerrys is definitely not going to happen, however, BlackBerry email may still be if deadlines for RIM to give the Indian government algorithms needed to decrypt messages aren’t met..
Telecom companies supporting the BlackBerry have been give 15 days to enable monitoring of the content transmitted on BlackBerrys or they will be ordered to stop the service. There are about 400,000 BlackBerry users in India and the will no longer be able to send or receive email or PIN messages from their devices if the deadlines aren’t met.
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