Indian men sit chatting outside a BlackBerry phone store in Mumbai last August. India says it will "insist" that BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) gives law enforcers a way to monitor its corporate email service, as a deadline for the company to comply expired.
India said on Monday it will "insist" that BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) gives law enforcers a way to monitor its corporate email service as a deadline for the company to comply expired.
It was not immediately clear what steps the Indian government will take to secure access to the service, but the Canadian company has previously said it was confident that New Delhi would not ban it from Asia's third-largest economy.
India's government, battling multiple insurgencies in areas from Kashmir in the northwest to the remote northeast, is worried militants could use encrypted Internet services to coordinate attacks.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram said RIM had already given India access to its popular instant messaging service.
"They have given us a solution to the Messenger service. We will insist that they give us the solution for the enterprise service too," Chidambaram told reporters, referring to BlackBerry's corporate email service.
India had given RIM until the end of January to come up with a solution allowing security forces to monitor heavily encrypted data transmitted on the smartphone or face a shutdown of the core service.
RIM's India spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment on the standoff.
India, which has the world's fastest-growing number of mobile users, is a key market for BlackBerry, which has 1.1 million customers in the country.
Chidambaram's demand came despite repeated statements by RIM that it cannot give Indian law enforcers a way to monitor its corporate mail service.
(c) 2011 AFP
