Will let Indian security agencies snoop directly

After several years of pressure from the Indian government, RIM has installed servers for its BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES)in Mumbai. The action will give Indian authorities a way to intercept and monitor texts and emails sent by BlackBerry devices.

India has been looking for greater visibility into messaging over RIM's network for almost two years. At one time, the Indian government even threatened to shut RIM down if it didn't share its algorithms used to decrypt messages so that they could be read by Indian Security agencies. Last January, RIM proposed a compromise by which these agencies could get access to BBM and public e-mail, but not corporate e-mail. In October, RIM set up a facility in Mumbai that could intercept and decrypt messages from identified suspects.

The new servers will theoretically let Indian officials directly intercept and decode the messages without RIM's involvement, although RIM has long maintained that its decentralized encryption makes interception difficult, if not impossible, even for itself. [via NDTV]

By Electronista Staff