No access to corp mail in India: RIM

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) reiterated on Thursday that it would not provide intelligence agencies access to its its enterprise email services. The issue should be dealt at the industry level, the company said.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) reiterated on Thursday that it would not provide intelligence agencies access to its its enterprise email services. The issue should be dealt at the industry level, the company said.

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Indian intelligence authorities want access to all BlackBerry services including corporate email.

"There is no possibility of us providing any kind of a solution," said Robert E Crow, vice-president, industry, government and university relations, RIM. "There are no keys to be handed...It's not possible to do so because the keys of the service are in possession of the corporate enterprises."

"BlackBerry represents a very small fraction of the total population of VPN (virtual private networks) in India. There may be more than a million VPNs in India with high security architecture," said Crow.

BlackBerry encrypts emails as they travel between a BlackBerry device and its BlackBerry enterprise server (BES). RIM maintains that since RIM does not have any "master key", it cannot provide access to information encrypted through BES.