In a letter to Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar, Canada-based Research In Motion, makers of BlackBerry, virtually refused to provide an intercepting technology for its BlackBerry Enterprise Server and said it had provided options to Law Enforcement Agencies within India's existing techno-legal framework.
Blackberry has asked for 18-24 months to provide a complete solution for interception of its Enterprise Mail, but with a condition that its services would not be banned, a guarantee that the government declined to give.
Bharti Airtel and Vodafone, India's leading cellular service providers, in collaboration with Research In Motion, on Friday launched the new BlackBerry Pearl 8110 smartphone with built-in global positioning system in the Indian market.
Toughening its stand, the Indian government has conveyed to the BlackBerry makers to install its server in India for tracking its messenger and enterprise mail service as the offer made by it to provide data from its Canada-based server could be detrimental to national security.
Embattled smartphone company BlackBerry Ltd plans to go private in a $4.7 billion deal being orchestrated by its largest shareholder.
Finnish mobile handset firm Nokia on Monday said it will set up its enterprise server in India in November this year to adhere to the government's security concerns, a move that may force BlackBerry to also follow it.
According to agencies, the government is now checking whether they have the technology to monitor emails when they get briefly stored in an enterprise server.
RIM cannot access information encrypted through BES given that neither RIM nor the wireless operators are ever in possession of the encryption keys.
Telecom operators who offer BlackBerry services are also ISPs. The feasibility of this solution, says DoT, will be explored after discussions with the Intelligence Bureau as well as the ISPs.
Amid mounting pressure from Home Ministry on the BlackBerry smartphone maker to share data interception technology, Telecom Ministry said the service could be monitored with the help of internet operators.
The voice-assistant and intuitive text search are other features which Lalvani says would aid productivity.
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