14 DAY TRIAL // The Indian government has given up on trying to resolve the BlackBerry corporate email access issue with RIM and has started putting pressure on local telecom operators to find a solution or risk their licenses.
For the past year, the Indian government has asked Research In Motion to provide a technical solution for the lawful interception of encrypted BlackBerry communications.
The Canadian company has implemented operator-level solutions which allows monitoring of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS).
However, it repeatedly stressed that it cannot offer the same capability for corporate email traffic, because it is encrypted by BlackBerry Enterprise Servers (BES) operated by private companies.
The BlackBerry maker explained that, in this case, its network only serves as carrier for the traffic and it doesn't have the keys to decrypt it.
Previous reports about the talks between the two parties suggested that RIM asked for 18 to 24 months to come up with a solution for the problem, but it seems the Indian government is unwilling to wait.
However, it cannot outright ban BlackBerry corporate services without attracting international criticism and angering the one million Indian BlackBerry users, many of whom are high-flier corporate executives.
The Wall Street Journal reports that India's federal home ministry is trying to pass that responsibility onto local telcos by leveraging a clause in their licensing agreements which says that operators need to hand over all encryption keys longer than 40 bits that are used to secure communications on their networks.
The move might force the country's telecom operators to stop carrying encrypted BlackBerry corporate traffic and will indirectly put pressure on RIM to provide a solution if it wants to continue to operate such services in the country.
The Indian government feels that untappable communications might provide shelter for terrorists and it doesn't plan to stop with BlackBerry. There are indications that p2p VoIP services like Skype are next.