The security issues RIM faces with other countries continues as it proposes a solution for India. After the headaches from the UAE’s decision to ban BlackBerry services, along with Saudi Arabia, RIM has offered India some access to its services, but it doesn’t seem to be good enough. The Indian government wants full, unrestricted access to BlackBerry services as it believes that those services could be “misused by militants as security agencies cannot access the messages sent through these services.”
While RIM is trying to accommodate the Indian government, it doesn’t seem like any proposed BlackBerry solution is going to satisfy it unless it has full access to RIM’s data, which the company isn’t going to hand over:
RIM has said that it is impossible for it or any other third party to read encrypted data sent via its enterprise offering and that the company cannot accommodate any request for a copy of a customer’s encryption key.
After several meetings with Indian government officials, the company has proposed that it could share the IP address of BlackBerry Enterprise Servers (BES) and the PIN and IMEI numbers of BlackBerry mobiles, a senior government official familiar with the discussions said, but added these were not sufficient.
An unnamed public official said that the fact that RIM is unwilling to give up access to its BlackBerry services and information is “unacceptable.”
Reuters reports:
“There should be a possibility of lawful interception and the service provider should give us that access. Until that is met, our security concerns shall remain,” U.K. Bansal, India’s internal security chief, told Reuters.
With mounting concerns from the UAE, Saudia Arabia, Lebanon and India, this isn’t going to be very easy for RIM, especially since the UAE has already made it clear that it will ban BlackBerry services starting October. While this will undoubtedly hurt business on both ends, and possibly the economy for the countries banning the service, it also doesn’t help RIM’s efforts to grow its business internationally.
[Via: Reuters]