Govt asks BlackBerry to provide access by Dec 31

The government has extended till December 31 the deadline given to Research in Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry phones, to provide access to its messenger and enterprise services to the security agencies.

The decision has been taken by the Home Ministry after a meeting with representatives of RIM and the Ministry of Telecommunication. Technical discussions on the BlackBerry Messenger Service (BMS) and BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) have been going on between the security agencies and the RIM.

The latter has sought more time as the October 31 deadline given to the company was approaching. "We are satisfied with the solution provided for the lawful interception of BMS. We want to test it for some more time while discussions on BES are still on, hence RIM has been given a fresh deadline," an official said.

According to the licensing conditions, service providers are liable to put in a mechanism allowing security agencies to intercept any conversation or message of any subscriber whenever required.

As telecom service providers like Airtel, Vodafone, RCom, the Tatas and the government-run BSNL and MTNL are offering BlackBerry services, it is the responsibility of these operators to ensure that the security agencies get access to all services they offer.

RIM representatives explained that BlackBerry mobile device sends encrypted emails, which are sent to BlackBerry Enterprise Server located with the service provider. BES decrypts messages and sends them to the email server of the service provider where they remain stored in decrypted form.

Then they are pushed to the BlackBerry device in encrypted form. "We hope that final solution would be found by December 31," the official said.

As of now, voicemail, SMS and BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS) have been made available to the law enforcement agencies. There are around one million BlackBerry subscribers in India. RIM offers the BlackBerry services in 175 countries across the globe.