India still in discussions for BlackBerry e-mail access

25th September, 2010 by adina
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Latest news about the ongoing security conflict between Research in Motion and the Indian government shows local officials still trying to get access to corporate e-mails after obtaining access to the instant messages that were sent from BlackBerry phones. As instant messages do not involve Research in Motion’s ultra-secure network, the company was able to allow access starting on the 1st of September. Attempting to reach a compromise, high-ranking executives of RIM and engineers have met with officials of India’s security. The nature of these meetings has not been unveiled.

It is relatively easy to intercept data that was sent from non-RIM devices, as only the approval of the carrier is required, but RIM has asserted that BlackBerry carriers had no access to the encrypted data. On the contrary, even for RIM is theoretically impossible to decrypt e-mails, as these ones create encryption keys only for the senders and the recipients. Under the circumstances it is almost impossible to decode the contents of these messages.

India has requested RIM and Internet services including Skype and Google to build local servers in order to allow security agencies to monitor data traffic. India has been intransigent about the risks related to Mumbai terrorist attacks coordinated by phone. However, they used plain-text SMS and have not been affected by Indian monitoring plans.


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