Government ready to boot out BlackBerry from India
23 Aug 2010
With BlackBerry smartphone maker Research In Motion (RIM) continuing to wriggle out of providing real time information to Indian security agencies, the government has finally decided to boot the smartphone handset maker out of the country.
As the 31 August deadline looms for the Canadian company to set systems in place to enable security agencies to intercept and monitor BlackBerry's messenger and enterprise services, RIM is stretching the patience of the Indian security establishments by coming up with dead-end solutions.
Earlier RIM had offered to provide certain information of the message sent through Blackberry such as the IP address of BlackBerry enterprise server and PIN and International Mobile Equipment Identity number (IEMI) of the BlackBerry handset, which was rejected by India.
Last week it offered limited access to BlackBerry messenger service by 1 September and full access by end November, and said that it wanted to conduct negotiations regarding its enterprise services or corporate email.
RIM's solution is to initially provide information manually and later through a non-human interface using the cloud computing environment. This solution would be require India to provide details of the mobile numbers to RIM, which would then make the information available, with the entire process requiring over a week.
India has made it clear to RIM that its security agencies need real time information, not deferred one.
