NEW DELHI: India has sent a formal notice to mobile operators ordering them to ensure security agencies can monitor BlackBerry messages by the end of the month, companies said Tuesday.
The move rachets up pressure on the smart phone’s Canadian makers Research in Motion (RIM) to satisfy a demand from the Indian home ministry for access to the heavily encrypted corporate emails and messaging service.
India, the world’s fastest growing cellular market, is a crucial marketing target for RIM with increasingly affluent Indians buying smart phones. The Canadian operator has said it is keen to settle the dispute.
Telecom operators have a responsibility under Indian law to ensure security agencies can access all services carried on their networks.
"We have received a letter telling us to ensure legal intervention capability for BlackBerry services is in place by August 31," a spokesman for Tata Teleservices, one of India’s leading mobile operators, told AFP.
"All the operators have received a letter," said an executive of another leading cellular firm, who declined to be identified.
India’s home ministry said last week it would cut off the popular corporate email and messaging services unless RIM gave security agencies access by August 31.
The move would affect corporate users among BlackBerry’s roughly 1.1 million users, whose communications have a higher level of encryption.
India, which has wide powers to monitor communications, can already monitor so-called BlackBerry "consumer mails" which have a lower level of encryption.
Home Ministry officials said they began discussions Tuesday with RIM technical representatives and wireless phone companies on ways for security agencies to monitor BlackBerry encrypted corporate email and instant messenger services that will continue this week and next.
The government may give BlackBerry a reprieve on its corporate messenger service beyond the August 31 deadline but the outlook is uncertain for its email, Dow Jones news service quoted an unidentified government official as saying.
The Economic Times newspaper said on its web site that New Delhi was sticking to its insistence that RIM provide security agencies with the means to intercept both services by August 31 or face shutdown.
RIM is seeking to honor its publicly stated commitment to be as cooperative as possible with governments "in the spirit" of supporting national security needs but also preserve "the lawful needs of citizens and corporations".
It has said it will not assist governments directly in decoding messages sent via its handsets and not cut any deals with governments.
India is battling insurgencies from Kashmir in the northwest to the far-flung northeast. The government has raised fears BlackBerry services could be used by militants. Islamist militants used mobiles to coordinate the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people.
The phone maker has been facing increasing demands from foreign governments to be able to intercept its communications. Saudi Arabia last week postponed a BlackBerry ban as the ultra-conservative Muslim country reported progress in solving its own security concerns.
The United Arab Emirates, however, has said it will ban BlackBerry messenger, email and web browsing services from October 11 for security reasons.
