Blackberry users in India finally has a reason to cheer. Blackberry maker Research In Motion has agreed to give access to its encrypted data to the Indian government from September 1. Earlier the government had imposed a deadline of August 31 asking RIM to provide access to their data or stop their services in India.
“RIM have made certain proposals for lawful access by law enforcement agencies and these would be operationalised immediately. The feasibility of the solutions offered would be assessed thereafter,” the Home Ministry said.
Indian government believes that BlackBerry’s infrastructure is a threat to the national security and their services could have been used by the militants in the 2008 attack on Mumbai. Blackberry devices scramble the messages and send them to servers in Canada. Authorities have asked RIM to provide access to these messages in order to counter terrorism and other criminal activities.
Earlier RIM said that, they don’t have the master key to unlock encryption codes of clients nor does they have any back door exist in the system that would allow them to give access to its services. At last RIM had no options left and they finally agreed to give access to all its services to the government.
The Indian government said that it will not shut down Blackberry’s services for the next 60 days, until then the government will evaluates proposals offered by RIM to monitor their services.