14 DAY TRIAL // RIM has provided Indian carriers with a lawful data interception solution that allows authorities to decrypt communications from BlackBerry consumer services.
The covered services include BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) email, but not corporate email which is dependent on BlackBerry Enterprise Servers (BES).
The Indian government has pressed the BlackBerry manufacturer to provide access to decrypted communications since the middle of last year.
They fear the increased security makes BlackBerry an attractive mobile solution for terrorists and criminals, concerns also mirrored by other countries.
To put pressure on the company, the Indian officials threatened to ban BlackBerry services for non-compliance with national security requirements.
However, the deadline was extended three times, the last one, according to official sources, being January 31. RIM acknowledged this date, but claims it was a target, not a deadline.
"The lawful access capability now available to RIM's carrier partners meets the standard required by the government of India for all consumer messaging services offered in the Indian marketplace," RIM said in a customer update quoted by The Australian.
"RIM continues to work closely with the government and RIM's carrier partners in India...We are pleased to have delivered a solution well before a mutually agreed milestone date of January 31, 2011," the company added.
However, the BlackBerry maker still hasn't met one of the government's requests - access to corporate email data. RIM continues to assert that it cannot provide such access because it doesn't have the encryption keys.
Corporate emails are encrypted between handsets and BES instances run by private companies. Therefore, to obtain the readable records, authorities need to subpoena them from those entities.
"No changes can be made to the security architecture for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (corporate email) customers since, contrary to any rumours, the security architecture is the same around the world and RIM truly has no ability to provide its customers' encryption keys," the Canadian company stressed.