RIM Gives India Access to Messenger Services

MUMBAI -- Canada's Research In Motion Ltd. Thursday said it has provided solutions that will let India's security agencies access the smartphone maker's popular messenger and public email services, but not the corporate email services.


"The lawful access capability now available to RIM's carrier partners meets the standard required by the government of India for all consumer messaging services offered in the Indian marketplace," Research In Motion said in a customer update.

RIM has been under pressure from the government to provide access to data on its secure networks as India wants to monitor RIM's corporate email and messenger services, fearing the BlackBerry's heavy encryption makes the smartphones convenient for terrorists to use without being monitored.

It had threatened to ban the services if the BlackBerry maker didn't provide such access.

India earlier said it was testing solutions offered by RIM to access the BlackBerry messenger service and that it already had access to monitor Internet, voice calls and short-messaging services on the smartphones.

"We also wish to underscore, once again, that this enablement of lawful access does not extend to BlackBerry Enterprise Server [corporate email], which is essentially an enterprise VPN solution," RIMM said.

Resource:- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703583404576079143422946666.html