RIM told to install servers in India to tap Blackberry E-mails

The government on Friday told Research In Mobile -the company that has developed Blackberry...

The government on Friday told Research In Mobile (RIM) — the company that has developed Blackberry — to install servers and requisite equipment in India in order to tap e-mails sent through the service. This was the message conveyed to the RIM representative in the country at a high level meeting in the department of telecommunications (DoT), which was chaired by the deputy director general (access services).

Officials from the ministry of home and representatives of Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance and Blackberry were also present in the meeting. The deadline for setting up this facility will be decided in a meeting scheduled next week, when high level officials of RIM from Canada will be present.

Blackberry is a handheld device developed by Canada-based RIM that enables access of e-mail via SMS. Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance are already offering Blackberry services in the country.

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“The DoT officials explained to the RIM representative the requirements of the Indian government in terms of tapping e-mails. The server should be present in India. Also, the company would be required to set up all the facilities so as to smoothly tap e-mails,” said an industry representative who was present in the meeting. Presently, RIM has its server based in Hong Kong.

Another meeting with RIM officials has been scheduled next week to discuss the issue further. In today’s meeting only a local sales representative of the company was present. “These are high level technical issues and hence the DoT officials today asked RIM representative to bring senior technical officials from Canada preferably by 2nd or 3rd of April for the next meeting,” said the industry representative.

The four telecom operators who are currently providing Blackberry services in India were also of the view that RIM should comply with licence conditions as soon as possible.

“All countries have different requirements regarding security issues. We are not concerned whether RIM meets security requirements in other countries or not. We want it to meet our security requirements,” said a telecom commission member.

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Presently four services are possible through Blackberry handsets. These services are — voice telephony, SMS, e-mail from Blackberry to Blackberry and e-mail from Blackberry to e-mails in other ISPs or non-Blackberry phones. The problem is only with the Blackberry-to-Blackberry e-mails. In all other cases, it is possible to tap voice or message.

RIM is currently operating services in 13 countries around the world. The present problem with Blackberry came to limelight when Tata Teleservices was not granted permission to operate the services. The government said that it was not possible to lawfully intercept e-mails sent through Blackberry phones. It is not yet clear how other operators like Reliance, Airtel and Vodafone are operating the services.