BlackBerry may face ultimatum at next meet

India’s security establishment could finally spell out a deadline this week for telecom operators offering BlackBerry services to get the owners, Canadian firm Research in Motion (RIM), to give security agencies access to its encrypted data.

India’s security establishment could finally spell out a deadline this week for telecom operators offering BlackBerry services to get the owners, Canadian firm Research in Motion (RIM), to give security agencies access to its encrypted data.

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If they don’t, they may well be asked to shut down services.

The absence of such access makes it difficult to monitor terrorist activity conducted using BlackBerrys.

The home ministry has convened a meeting later this week with the department of telecom and mobile service providers who offer BlackBerry services.

Government sources said that since BlackBerrys did not allow security agencies access to the voice and data carried by them, the mobile service providers were violating their licence conditions in which they had agreed to provide such access.

Operators would either have to pay penalties for violation as well as persuade RIM to take the necessary measures or pull out the two services — Messenger and Enterprise Server — that cannot be monitored, sources said.

Around one million subscribers in India use BlackBerry.