Differences have cropped up between the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and security agencies, regarding the issue of intercepting highly encrypted data mobile services, such as those offered on BlackBerry devices.
The matter may now be referred to the Committee of Secretaries.
Prior to this, the government had appointed a committee to examine this issue. However, representatives of the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Intelligence Bureau refused to sign the report.
It is believed that the Intelligence Bureau had rejected almost all the proposals made by the special committee.
Thereafter, DoT had suggested that the security agencies should intercept the servers of various corporates to track high encrypted data services. It had also said that law enforcement agencies should develop its own technology to penetrate telecom networks, rather than depending on operators.
Security agencies had raised concerns about a number of data services being offered by companies like Nokia and Google.
However, the basic problem is that under Indian laws, operators are allowed to use encryption up to 40 bit whereas most of the data services use much higher encryption to make it more secure against hacking. Security agencies do not have the technology to crack into anything that has higher encryption keys.
