Will RIM let India spy on users? Or won’t it?
p2pnet news | Mobiles:- The confusing debate continues in India over whether or not Blackberry should allow government security services to spy on some users.
India’s department of telecom (DoT) has issued an ultimatum to Canadian Blackberry maker RIM to provide “encryption solutions” if it wants to continue operations.
Put another way, India is seemingly telling Research in Motion to either find a way to allow government agencies to spy on some Blackberry users, or do the other thing.
But a second story directly contradicts the first, quoting a “top telecommunications official” as denying there’ll be a disruption.
“Sources” told the Economic Times of India the DoT, “had communicated its stance to both RIM executives and the Canadian High Commission that service providers (telcos) here would be asked to discontinue BlackBerry services unless the company provides monitoring solutions either in the form of encryption keys, or by shifting servers to India,” it says, going on:
“Sources also said that DoT had told the Canadian company that Thursday’s meet could be the last of a series of meetings on the issue, and RIM would have to come back with a solution to break the deadlock. Both DoT and RIM have been in talks to resolve the BlackBerry imbroglio for months. Encryption solutions will allow security agencies to monitor emails and data sent between BlackBerry devices.”
However, “A top telecommunications official on Friday ruled out any disruption in BlackBerry services, even though Research in Motion – the Canada-based maker of the push-mail device – is yet to resolve India’s security concerns,” says the Hindustan Times.
“There is no problem with the BlackBerry handsets or services and BlackBerry services are not going to be discontinued in India,” it has Siddhartha Behura, secretary, Department of Telecommunications, stating.
“RIM is running the service in other countries as well and if it has not been asked to discontinue on security grounds in those places why should it happen in India,” Behura says in the story.
India has more than 114,000 Blackberry users distributed among Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular, BPL and Reliance Communications.
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.Stumble It!
continue operations – RIM, India, in Blackberry ’spy’ talks, May 30, 2008
Economic Times of India – Open code or shut shop, DoT tells RIM, May 30, 2008
Hindustan Times – ‘BlackBerry services will not be disrupted’, May 31, 2008
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