Centre not satisfied with BlackBerry solution

The ministry of home affairs has expressed its dissatisfaction over the BlackBerry email and web browsing interception solution offered by service providers saying that the mechanism was not user friendly.

“The email and web browsing interception mechanism is not user friendly. The intercepted contents are embedded in a lot of undesirable junk data making it difficult to find the actual useful content of intercepted email and web browsing from intercepted data,” the ministry of home affairs said in a letter to the department of telecommunications (DoT).

BSNL and Aircel have satisfactorily demonstrated the monitoring capabilities for BlackBerry messenger services in the manual mode. However, BlackBerry internet service (BIS) interception has not been demonstrated by any service provider except Idea Cellular, the letter added.

The letter also said the final arrangement for interception of Blackberry messenger services should have both BB Tool and NDAS software installed at the premises of service providers. The process of decoding should also be made automatic without any manual intervention, it added.

Research in Motion (RIM) has to offer a final solution for intercepting its BlackBerry messenger (BBM) services by end of January, 2011. The government had earlier extended the deadline to offer a final solution by December 31 for giving access to its messenger and enterprise services. Prior to this, the deadline was August 31, which was extended by 60 days to October-end.

It is estimated that there are about one million BlackBerry subscribers in India.

RIM uses powerful codes to encrypt email messages as they travel between BlackBerry device and a computer – BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) – that is designed to secure emails. The company does not possess any master key, as it is created by the customers, RIM had said.

Security agencies had expressed concerns over the encrypted data through BlackBerry mobile phones and have been asking for a decryption solution for its corporate mails and messenger services.

DoT had instructed all telecom service providers to ensure that a technical solution for intercepting and monitoring of BlackBerry services in readable format is made available to the law enforcing agencies.