The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has said that its technical team is testing the interception solution provided by Research In Motion (RIM) and is expecting a report by end-October.
According to R Chandrasekhar, secretary, DoT, “Our testing team is examining the interception solution provided by RIM and we expect a report from them in a month. Thereafter, we will decide the course of action required.?
Prior to this, RIM submitted a solution for real-time interception of its Blackberry Enterprise Services (BES) after extending its deadline multiple times. The government had set August 15, 2011, as the deadline for RIM to provide the country’s security agencies with interception keys to enable real-time tracking of its BlackBerry messenger and corporate email services in a readable format.
If the solution provided by RIM withstands scrutiny, the government plans to ask other smartphone makers to develop a similar solution.
According to the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, and the licencing terms and conditions for operators, companies are required to provide a lawful interception and monitoring solution for any service they provide.
RIM uses an encryption mechanism to encode email messages sent between BlackBerry devices and a computer, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), designed to secure e-mails. RIM had earlier said that the company does not possess any master key to decode the messages, as it is randomly generated on customers’ Blackberry smartphones.
Security agencies had expressed concerns over the encrypted data being sent using BlackBerry mobile phones and have been asking for a decryption solution for its corporate mails and messenger services.
Based on the perceived security threat, DoT had instructed all operators to ensure that a technical solution for interception and monitoring of BlackBerry services in a readable format is made available to law enforcement agencies, failing which the services would have to be stopped.
