[Infowarrior] - RIMM agrees to hand over its encryption keys to India

[Richard Forno]

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion agrees to hand over its encryption keys to India

Joji Thomas Philip, ET Bureau Aug 2, 2012, 05.57AM IST

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-08-02/news/33001399_1_blackberry-enterprise-encryption-keys-corporate-emails

NEW DELHI: BlackBerry maker Research in Motion's (RIM) four-year standoff with the Indian government over providing encryption keys for its secure corporate emails and popular messenger services is finally set to end.

RIM recently demonstrated a solution developed by a firm called Verint that can intercept messages and emails exchanged between BlackBerry handsets, and make these encrypted communications available in a readable format to Indian security agencies, according to an exchange of communications between the Canadian company and the Indian government.

This satisfies India's core demand that RIM provide intelligence and security agencies with automatic solutions to monitor all communication on BlackBerry smartphones on a real-time basis, an official aware of the development said.

"I can confirm that RIM is providing an appropriate lawful access solution that enables India's telecom operators to be legally complaint with respect to their BlackBerry consumer traffic," said a company spokesman. But he said there was no access to secure encrypted BlackBerry enterprise communications or corporate emails as these were accessible only to the owners of these services.

Correspondence reviewed by ET, however, shows that the solution demonstrated by RIM can intercept all BlackBerry services. A telecom department official also confirmed that corporate emails would form part of the services that the government will be able to monitor.

The Canadian smartphone maker, which had set up servers and other interception facilities in Mumbai last year after India had threatened to shut down BlackBerry services, has now handed over this infrastructure to Indian agencies, internal government documents reviewed by ET reveal.

India One of the Few Bright Spots

The DoT will soon ask all telcos to connect their networks to the interception facilities built by RIM here. DoT is currently awaiting the home ministry's approval to issue this directive. Incidentally, RIM had denied setting up this facility last year.

Super-secure corporate emails, called Blackberry Enterprise Services, have traditionally been RIM's main attraction for companies and corporate executives.

In India, in the last few years, the BlackBerry messenger service has become very popular among students and teenagers, providing a new user segment for the smartphone maker.

An amicable solution over the monitoring issue is important for the Canadian smartphone maker since India is one of the few bright spots for the company that has been battling falling sales in its primary markets of the US and Europe.

Industry watchers say RIM has tripled its customer base here to close to 5 million over the last two years, even as its market share has crashed globally with customers moving to competitors like Apple and handsets that run on Google's Android operating system.

India also offers massive growth opportunities as a tiny fraction of the country's 950 million cellphone customers use smartphones.

The home ministry had been seeking interception solutions since the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai after security agencies learnt that Pakistani militants used mobile and satellite phones to coordinate the strikes.

Currently, Indian agencies submit the name of the suspect to RIM, which in turn provides the decoded communication records of the customer, but this does not include its enterprise services.

The handset maker had been providing the requisite information only after checking if the interception requests had legal authorisation, executives aware of the development told ET.

Under the new setup, RIM has said it would not even remotely monitor its Mumbai facility anymore, and has agreed to 'disconnect the remote maintenance system monitoring which it normally provides to ensure high service level'.

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