Blackberry must obey or leave: Pilot

If Research in Motion, the Canadian owners of BlackBerry cannot provide India’s security agencies with a technical solution by which they can monitor and intercept emails in a readable format, their services may be banned, Sachin Pilot, minister of state for telecom, confirmed before the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. HT reports.

If Research in Motion, the Canadian owners of BlackBerry cannot provide India’s security agencies with a technical solution by which they can monitor and intercept emails in a readable format, their services may be banned, Sachin Pilot, minister of state for telecom, confirmed before the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

Telecom service providers have been given time till August 31 to make RIM comply. Black-Berry’s email and messenger services are under the government’s scanner for not conforming to security guidelines.

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Pilot added telecom licences specify security conditions, which include subscriber verification, allowing lawful interception and monitoring, as well as power to the government to restrict telecom services in certain areas if it feels the need.

RIM has officially stated that it is not in a position to give access of an Enterprise mail to a third party as it does not posses any master key.

"The BlackBerry security architecture for enterprise customers is based on a symmetric key system whereby the customer creates his own key and only the customer ever possesses a copy of their encryption key. RIM does not possess a “master key”,” said the company in a statement.