Cannot compromise BlackBerry security architecture: Research in Motion

Amid discussions with India on lawful interception of data sent from BlackBerry devices, the smartphone maker, Research in Motion, has said it cannot compromise the security architecture of its enterprise solution.

The company is continuing discussions with governments in India, the UAE and other countries, as well as with service providers, and "believe we have made good progress in those discussions," RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie said.

"I am optimistic that a positive and constructive outcome can be achieved," he said in a conference call with analysts yesterday.

The company had, however, stated that the security concerns were not specific to BlackBerry operations only, as there are other operators who offer similar services.

In India, BlackBerry services have over a million subscribers and virtually all leading operators, including state-owned BSNL and MTNL, offer these services to users.

India had threatened to ban corporate emails and BlackBerry-to-BlackBerry messenger services amid fears that encrypted communications could be used by militants to plan attacks.

RIM was given time till August 31 to come up with a way for Indian authorities to monitor emails and messenger services.

RIM has been given a 60-day reprieve from the Indian government to continue services in the country on the condition that the Canadian firm would have to ultimately set up a local server to continue with its full services beyond November.

Balsillie, however, stressed that while it is "respectful of government needs and fully cooperating to comply with lawful requirements on an industry standard basis, we cannot compromise the security architecture of the BlackBerry enterprise solution."

"RIM simply has no ability to read the encrypted information and has no master key or backdoor key to allow access," the Los Angeles Times quoted Balsillie as saying.

He said the company knows it is a "fundamentally important security feature" for its corporate clients.

RIM provides corporate email and instant messaging services to about one million users in India.

The company posted a net income of $796.7 million for the second quarter ended August 28, up from $475.6 million last year.

Its second-quarter shipments climbed 45% to 12.1 million units vis-a-vis the previous year.

Revenue rose 31% to $4.62 billion for the second quarter.

About 52% of BlackBerry's revenue came from outside the US and more than 45% of BlackBerry subscribers were outside North America.