The Indian authorities said on Thursday said they are still undecided whether to allow BlackBerry corporate email services of Research In Motion Ltd in the country beyond the August 31 deadline.
The government has cleared other services such as the BlackBerry messenger, voice calls and short-messaging services of the company after it addressed security concerns raised by security officials in the country.
RIM provided has given security agencies an existing tool that’s allows them to monitor text on encrypted BlackBerry messenger and the company is developing a tool to give to security agencies around the world. Security officials are now able to monitor Blackberry Internet, voice calls and short messaging.
An agreement was reached between the government officials and RIM soon after August 31 deadline for the company and telecom service providers, to offer a solution to the address security concerns raised by home ministry and security officials, was announced.
The home ministry was concerned about monitoring data services on these handsets and had raised the issue with the company. The ministry has asked the telecom authorities to give RIM a period of 15 days to align its email and other data services with the Formats that can be read by the security and intelligence agencies.
Security officials have said that continuation of BlackBerry services in the present format is dangerous for the security of the country. They indicated that the security personnel are unable to or find it very difficult to intercept or decipher messages that rely on codes with high encryption and are sent from these phones.
The mechanism scrambles the emails when sent and then unscrambles them when it reaches its destinations. The security agencies were concerned over the BlackBerry’s Enterprise and Messenger services which can be used by potentials threats to the country.
RIM has over a million customers in the country and had promised to resolve issues before the deadline to continue its service offering in the country. India is concerned that these services can be used unlawful activities. Similar security concerns have also being raised in other countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
