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DoT to ask RIM to open server in India
By siliconindia
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Monday, 09 August 2010, 16:59 IST |
3 Comments
New Delhi: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is likely to ask the BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) to open a server in India. The move comes after RIM has agreed in Saudi Arabia to help catch the data on its phones.
According to PTI, the objective behind the attempt is to break the impasse between the government and RIM, under which the company has offered to provide the 'metadata' to security agencies.
The Ministry of Home Affairs is not fully satisfied with the solution provided by RIM and discussions are still going on, said a DoT official.
As told by news agencies, RIM has agreed to provide the metadata. For a text document, the metadata may contain information about how long the document is, who the author is and when the document was written, along with a short summary of the document.
RIM had been asked earlier by the Indian government to set up a server in India for full interception of data through BlackBerry. However, it is not clear whether even this would satisfy the home ministry
RIM had earlier agreed to provide the IP address of the enterprise server, located in the customer's premise. To enable security agencies access the data in a readable format, it also agreed to provide the PIN and the IMEI number of each BlackBerry mobile phone used by a subscriber. However, it also made it clear it did not have a 'master key' which would allow a third party to gain access to data.
The only way for security agencies to obtain the decrypted data is at the email server located in the customers' premises, said a RIM executives in a meeting with DoT. RIM puts a server in the premises of a company which promises to pick up a large number of BlackBerry connections for its employees. This is done so that the data or email of the employees is secure within the company.
The telecom operators that offer Blackberry services to their mobile subscribers include Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, Reliance Communications and state-run telecom PSUs Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam.
