BlackBerry talks of ‘access’ with riders

A day after the government fixed the August 31 deadline for service providers to come up with a technical solution for lawful interception of the encrypted messenger and the enterprise email services of BlackBerry, Research In Motion (RIM), the Canada-based makers of the smart phone, has started talking of “lawful access” solution for its services, but with riders attached.

In a statement issued from Toronto, RIM said that any capabilities it provides to carriers for “lawful access” purposes be limited by four principles. Also, it maintained that “RIM truly has no ability to provide its customers’ encryption keys”, and that “there are no special deals for specific countries”.

However, neither RIM nor any service provider offering the BlackBerry service has given any indication on what technical solution is being worked on. The ministry of home affairs and Indian security agencies are insisting that monitoring of BlackBerry data cannot be conditional.
 
One of the four principles specified by RIM is that the carriers’ capabilities be limited to the strict context of lawful access and national security requirements as governed by the country’s judicial oversight and rules of law.

Also, the carriers’ capabilities must be technology and vendor neutral, “allowing no greater access to BlackBerry consumer services than the carriers and regulators already impose on RIM’s competitors and other similar communications technology companies,” the BlackBerry’s makers have stressed.

The company statement has added that “also driving RIM’s position is the fact that strong encryption is a fundamental commercial requirement for any country to attract and maintain international business anyway and similarly strong encryption is currently used pervasively in traditional VPNs (Virtual Private networks) on both wired and wireless networks in order to protect corporate and government communications”.

The fourth and the final principle is that there must be a “consistent global standard for lawful access requirements that does not include special deals for specific countries”.

On Thursday, after a high-level meeting, top officials of the ministry of home affairs had asked representatives of the department of telecom (DoT) to come up with a technical solution for lawful interception. DoT was asked to convey a message to the telecom operators offering the BlackBerry service and to RIM that if no solution is provided by August 31 they should be ready to face action. RIM vice president Robert E Crowe had a meeting with home secretary GK Pillai in the capital after that.

Telcos, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices, BSNL and MTNL, offer the BlackBerry service in India to around five lakh subscribers, though another estimate puts the number at one million. If the government decides to shut the services, its subscribers will only be able to make phone calls and surf the Internet using the smart phone device.
 
Google, Skype on radar
India will go after any company, including Google and Skype, after cracking down on BlackBerry in its bid to keep the world’s fastest growing mobile phone market safe from militants and cyber spying, a government source said on Friday. “Wherever there is a concern on grounds of national security the government will want access and every country has a right to lawful interference,” a senior interior security official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.                                                                                   

The authorities have for more than a year been looking at Google’s messaging, Skype and other providers of communication in India. A government document shows India may ask Google and Skype for greater access to encrypted information, after it threatened to ban BlackBerry services this week. Google and Skype said they haven’t received any notices from the government.