NSA supervising talks for Blackberry solution

NSA is overseeing the discussion National Test Research Organisation (NTRO), under the Home Ministry, along with DoT is holding with smartphone maker Blackberry to find a solution where the data traffic passing through the Canadian firm's network could be intercepted by security agencies.     

"NTRO, under the supervision of NSA, is interacting with Blackberry... Department of Telecom is also engaged in the talks as any solution that will be given by NTRO or Blackberry, have to be implemented by DoT," Raja told PTI.     

So far the government has been insisting to have a local server to host emails in India, but Research-In- Motion, the makers of Blackberry, has cited problems in setting up country-specific servers.      The government is now also evaluating the impact of such a server on the company, which has a central server in Canada.     

"We are insisting for a (Blackberry) server in India to take care of security agencies concern. But technically and commercially what will be the impact on the Blackberry also has to be taken into consideration and it is being taken," he said.     

At present, India has over one lakh BlackBerry customers between five operators  Bharti Airtel, BPL, Vodafone Essar, Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular.