"We are fully aware of the sensitivity and confidentiality of our conversation with RIM and would like to assure them that we respect their commercial interest and would do nothing to jeopardize the same," Telecom Secretary Siddhartha Behura said in a letter to foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon for communication to Canada.
He said the government hoped that it would be able to resolve the issue satisfactorily and speedily. "The signs are encouraging."
The Canadian High Commissioner David M Malone had written to Communications and IT Minister A Raja on April 17 on the issue of lawful interception of information as related to Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM). He had said the issue to be understood was who in the government of India was empowered to resolve this issue.
Malone had written, "This is also necessary in order to ensure that right representative from RIM are at the table.
The discussions managed by Department of Telecommunication (DoT) to date have inspired little confidence that those involved on the Indian side are actually empowered to settle the matter as Indian government's demand of RIM keep expanding while media leaks proliferate, some of them very damaging from a security perspective and sourced by the journalist involved directly to the DoT.
"Potential terrorists are now aware, because of these leaks, of technical issues unknown to most of us previously."
Law enforcement agencies had raised the issue of non availability of interception facilities which have a bearing on national security in respect of Blackberry services.
There are about four lakh Blackberry subscribers in India and the services are being offered by Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, Reliance Communications and BPL. While Tata Teleservices were stopped from offering it until the issue was resolved to the satisfaction of security agencies.
The matter was discussed by DoT Secretary with Home Secretary and it was felt that security concerns have to be jointly addressed for finding solution.
Ever since the controversy erupted, the DoT has been meeting various stakeholders from time to time and in order to find a solution a meeting was held between DoT and IB officials with technical representative of RIM on April 10.
The requirements were explained and the response of RIM was encouraging with respect to the setting up of server and it was being examined, Behura said in his letter to Menon.
Meanwhile, DoT has directed the service providers not to connect or provide/run Blackberry services unless the required monitoring system to the satisfaction of the security agencies are in place and the master key and algorithm are deposited by the licensor (DoT).
