Won`t be able to provide customer data, says RIM

This would not, however, jeopardize the services as talks with the government were in progress and there was no danger of the service going off the air.

RIM has come under fire from the security agencies for not allowing them to intercept data and has been negotiating with the government for more than two months to come to a solution.

There are over 4 lakh Blackberry customers in the country. And security agencies have been pushing the company to hand over the encryption keys, the main USP of the technology, for scrutinising data.

RIM, which has been silent on the controversy, asserted that it did not possess any encryption keys. RIM clarified that "the BlackBerry security architecture for enterprise customers is based on a symmetric key system where the customer alone creates his own key and possesses a copy of the encryption key.

RIM does not possess a "master key", nor does any "back door" exist in the system that would allow RIM or any third party to gain unauthorized access to the key or corporate data."

The Canadian company also said that "governments have a wide range of resources and methodologies to satisfy national security and law enforcement needs, without compromising commercial security requirements".

Operators however reckon that security agencies can consider various options. "Most of the Blackberry users are corporate users. Since one can easily intercept the data on corporate servers, why should there be a problem? Moreover, the government has every right to break the encryption codes for security reasons" said a senior executive of a leading telecom company which offers Blackberry services.