RIM refuses to give access to BlackBerry Mail

“There is no possibility of us providing any kind of a solution. There is no solution,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,” RIM Vice-President (Industry,Government and University Relations) Robert E Crow said.

Indian security agencies have been demanding access to all BlackBerry services as part of efforts to fight militancy and security threats over the internet and through telephone communications.

“Certainly my perception is that there is a broader recognition and appreciation that this is not an issue unique to BlackBerry. 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,” he said.

RIM encrypts emails as they travel between a BlackBerry device and its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). The Canadian firm has maintained that since RIM does not have any “master key”,and therefore cannot provide access to information encrypted through BES.

Earlier this week,RIM had said that it has delivered the technology to monitor contents on its messenger service (BBM) and had asked the government to issue a directive to the operators to connect to its new automated service.

This new service,to be made available before January 31,will automatically render lawfully intercepted BlackBerry Messenger messages in a format readable by Indian agencies.

“We are confident that it (the new service) meets the requirements,” Crow said.

BlackBerry has over a million subscribers in India,which is one of the fastest growing markets globally in terms of new subscriber additions.

Crow,who has been leading RIM’s discussions with the Indian government,said he will meet officials again over the course of his current visit.

“Apart from the current issue,we would also talk about supporting the developer community in India and Canada,apart from deployment of a new standard — evolved EDGE,” Crow said.

Evolved EDGE is an extension of the existing GSM mobile telephony standard,which theoretically offers speeds of up to one Mbps with small upgrades to existing 2G infrastructure.

“Operators can use evolved EDGE to offer broadband speeds of upto 1 Mbps with slight tweaking of their existing 2G infrastructure. Telcos globally and in India are trialing this new standard,” Crow but declined to comment on the Indian operators testing the new technology.