The Hindu Business Line : NSA looking into security concerns over Blackberry

New Delhi, July 12In a bid to find a solution to the security concerns around Blackberry services, the National Security Adviser is now supervising a discussion between National Test Research Organisation, under the Home Ministry, Department of Telecom and Canada-based Research In Motion.

The discussions are being held to find a spot on RIM’s network where the data traffic passing through Blackberry could be intercepted by security agencies.

The agencies had earlier rejected any temporary solution to the Blackberry controversy and told the Government that it must make sure that traffic originating and terminating on the device should not travel outside the country without proper monitoring.

DoT was considering deploying certain software that would allow the security agencies to snoop into Blackberry network without having to break into the service codes.

Blackberry handsets are designed by Research In Motion and uses high encryption code, making it impossible for the Indian agencies to monitor data being transmitted by users.

The DoT had earlier asked the company to set up a local server in the country which would allow the security forces to snoop into the network. However, Research In Motion said that it was not possible to give decryption codes or set up a local data centre in the country.

The DoT had earlier asked RIM to give its codes to Indian security agencies that will enable them to monitor the data being transmitted through Blackberry. The key problem was that Indian agencies do not have the required technology to monitor data that has encryption codes higher than 40 bits.

On the issue of setting up a local data centre within the country, RIM had said that Blackberry was designed to perform as a global system independent of geography. “The location of data centres and the customer’s choice of wireless network are irrelevant factors from a security perspective since end-to-end encryption is utilised,” RIM had said.

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