GOVT MAY GET KEYS TO YOUR BLACKBERRY MAILBOX SOON

Rashmi Pratap, Mumbai
The Economic Times

In a major change of stance, Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM) may allow the Indian government to intercept non-corporate emails sent over BlackBerrys. This is expected to solve the row between the Department of Telecom (DoT) and RIM to a large extent, since the government’s security concerns pertain more to emails from individual users than enterprise customers.

At the core of the issue is the data encryption technology used in BlackBerrys. BlackBerry uses a very high level of encryption — at 256 bits — while sending data.

BlackBerry scrambles messages before sending and unscrambles them at the receiver’s BlackBerry. Owing to security concerns, the government wants to be able to intercept and decode the data.

However, the government’s decryption software can decode messages encrypted only up to 40 bits. India wants RIM to either hand over the decryption keys or reduce encryption to 40 bits.

According to officials close to the development, Canadian High Commissioner David Malone and RIM officials met telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura on May 7. “It was explained by RIM that it should be possible for the government to monitor emails to non-business enterprise customers,” sources said. “RIM is considering giving access to individual users’ email to the government. Details on this will be provided in two or three weeks,” sources said.

BlackBerry offers two kinds of services — for enterprise (corporate) customers and for individual (non-corporate) users. Majority of its 1,14,000-plus customers in India are from the enterprise segment. However, decrypting emails of non-corporate customers is a larger security concern for Indian intelligence agencies.

A RIM spokesperson said: “RIM operates in more than 135 countries around the world and respects the regulatory requirements of governments. RIM does not comment on confidential regulatory matters or speculation on such matters in any given country.”

Cyber law expert Pavan Duggal, however, said the move to give partial access to the government could open up potential legal risks for BlackBerry service providers. In India, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone and BPL Mobile offer Blackberry services.

“By virtue of Sec 79 of IT Act 2000, network service providers are made liable for all third-party data or information made available by them. Therefore, if such an action takes place, then potential of legal action arising cannot be ruled out,” Duggal said.

He said there was a need for providing a more comprehensive solution to the issue. “BlackBerry issue has various ramifications — jurisdiction, location of servers, applicable law and a sovereign government exercising the right to intercept data located in foreign land. These piecemeal solutions will not work,” he said.