By IANS,
New Delhi : India Thursday began examining a technical solution provided by BlackBerry’s Canadian manufacturer to access the smartphone’s mails under its enterprise services, meeting the country’s security concerns.
“The Blackberry’s manufacturer provided some technical solution to access their enterprise services in a meeting with officials from ministries of home and the department of telecommunications, besides other departments,” said a home ministry official.
Asked about how far the solution meets the country’s security concerns, the official said: “We are yet to assess its efficacy. A technical discussion is underway currently to examine its workability. We are likely to reach any conclusion only Friday.”
Research In Motion (RIM) had agreed earlier to offer a technical solution to access its smart phone enterprise services in the meeting held Thursday.
A top home ministry official had told IANS Wednesday that RIM had already provided access to one of its two services under scanner by the Indian security agencies.
“We are already accessing Blackberry Messenger Services now. RIM officials will meet us on Thursday and Friday to take the process further. We hope to take a final decision on this by early next week,” the official had said.
“They (RIM officials) also told us they will provide some sort of a technical solution to access BlackBerry Enterprise Services. So we will then evaluate all these things, see if it satisfies our security concerns and take a decision accordingly.”
India has already set Aug 31 as deadline for the country’s telecom operators to give access to decoded data sent via BlackBerry devices to law enforcement and security agencies, just as they have access to SMS messages and phone calls.
The deadline was primarily set for two BlackBerry’s offerings — the enterprise service, used mainly by corporates to connect their mail system with the device, and messenger for instant data communications.
“If a technical solution is not provided by Aug 31, 2010, the government will review the position and take steps to block these two services from the network,” an official statement issued earlier this month had said.