Blackberry controversy

In a new twist to the BlackBerry controversy, the government on Wednesday said the onus of giving access to security agencies to monitor the information on these smart phones lies with the service providers.

Government sources said, according to the licensing conditions, the service providers are liable to put in a mechanism to allow the 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.

Sources further said the maker of BlackBerry phones, Research in Motion (RIM), has conveyed to the operators that services like email and voicemail can be intercepted by the security agencies but no commitment has been given to services like BlackBerry Messager.


Source--Economic Times

Note: As of now, emails and messages thru blackberry are undecipherable by security agencies in India.China may be provided a special server by RIM for tracking these mails/messages after  the Chinese government raised a similar concern.RIM has agreed to decompress the data files of messages, voice mails and consumer emails but enterprise emails and chats will still remain undecipherable due to high degree of encryption.Indian Govt is putting pressure on RIM to remove this one last hurdle.