RIM Security System on India’s Agenda Thursday

NEW DELHI/OTTAWA, May 28 (Reuters) – Research in Motion’s(RIM.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) boast of rock solid security is set to haunt it innegotiations with Indian officials this week, as India worriesthat messages sent on the Blackberry cannot be traced.

A telecoms ministry official said the two sides will meeton Thursday to discuss Indian concerns that e-mail sent byBlackBerry devices pose a risk because the messages cannot beintercepted.

Wary of attacks by militants, the government wants RIM toinstall servers in India.

A spokesman for RIM in India declined to comment, butanalysts said it could be hard to reach an amicable solution.

"My reading and interpretation of the story is what theIndian government wants to be able to do is tap into RIM’snetwork operation center and be able to intercept and probablydo keyword searches," said Sean Ryan, a mobile enterpriseanalyst with research group IDC.

"RIM is not set up like that and that’s the securitymodel…It’s not the type of thing where they can actually viewthe messages themselves. They’re just really passing thisthrough."

The Indian government has already held a series of meetingswith domestic mobile operators and with Waterloo, Ontario-basedRIM, which has some 114,000 BlackBerry subscribers in India.

Telecoms minister Andimuthu Raja said last week that RIMhad promised to provide a solution in two months.

But RIM told Indian customers in a May 23 letter that itcould not accommodate any request for a copy of a customer’sencryption key because it does not have a "master key" and itssystem does not allow "back door" entry.

RIM said its security system was designed to give customersconfidence that no one, including RIM, could access the datatransmitted wirelessly.

"Governments have a wide range of resources andmethodologies to satisfy national security and law enforcementneeds without compromising commercial security requirements,"the company said in its letter.

RIM’s sturdy data encryption is a key attraction forcustomers, but it has already caused concern for somegovernments, most vocally India and France.

Avi Greegart, mobile devices research director from marketresearch firm Current Analysis said it was unclear whattight-lipped RIM has done to ease government concerns. "I’mvery curious to see the resolution here," he said.

T.V. Ramachandran, director general of Cellular Operators’Association of India, said RIM could consider putting serversin India, while Internet security expert Vijay Mukhi said it ishard to believe that no one has a key to encrypt and decryptmessages.

"America has spent billions of dollars for monitoring thecyberspace. I don’t believe they would allow BlackBerry tooperate if nobody has the encryption key," he said, arguingthat RIM could give security agencies rights to monitore-mails. "Not real-time though, and not a blanket access," headded.

India has been touchy about Internet services, includingGoogle Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research), according to mediareports. Google has allowed Indian government access todecipher information from its social networking site Orkut.

"There is actually a concern," said Mukhi. "Terrorists douse technology and they would some day or maybe they arealready using BlackBerry services. So how do you stop them?"

Bharti Airtel (BRTI.BO: Quote, Profile, Research), Reliance Communications (RLCM.BO: Quote, Profile, Research),Vodafone (VOD.L: Quote, Profile, Research)-controlled Vodafone Essar and BPL Mobile offerBlackBerry services in India.(Editing by Janet Guttsman)