BlackBerry imbroglio continues with India

The BlackBerry imbroglio continued as the Indian telecom department reportedly rejected the interception solution offered by Research In Motion (RIM), maker of smart phone of Canada.

In a confidential note the Department of Telecom’s(DoT) security wing, ET, claimed that its experts had been unable to intercept or monitor secure email communication made through the BES in readable format.

” RIM said it does not have the keys that can be offered to security agencies for converting secure corporate email into readable format,” said a DoT official, who was not authorised to be quoted.

The DoT’s internal note said the law enforcement agencies have failed to intercept chats on the BlackBerry Messenger platform, which allegedly runs counters to the home ministry’s recent position that it was satisfied with the interception solution offered by the RIM.

The Centre has directed all mobile phone firms to set up legal interception equipment that can monitor services on every BlackBerry handset.

The RIM had suggested that blocking its BlackBerry services would not end India’s security concerns but induce the legion of Internet offenders to migrate to the innumerable alternate encryption solutions available online.

The October 31 is deadline for RIM to hand over the encryption keys and codes of its corporate mail and messaging services to the Indian security establishment.

RIM has more than one million BlackBerry users in India.