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RIM official meets Home Minister

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CIOL Bureau
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NEW DELHI, INDIA: Amid speculations that India may temporarily ban some BlackBerry services, officials of Home Ministry and the Department of telecommunications met here today to find a solution to the issue. However, the meeting was inconclusive, and deferred the decision on blocking some BlackBerry services till further consultations with all stakeholders soon, said an official.

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"The meeting did not yield any result. Another round of meeting is likely," the official told reporters after the meeting.

Meanwhile, an official from the Home Ministry said that Robert Crow, vice president Industry, Government and University Relations, RIM today met Home Minister P. Chidambaram. He said the RIM official was not part of the official meeting and that it was a courtesy call. He refused to divulge further details of the meeting.

Though Chidambaram also said "This was a courtesy call", it is learnt that the representative from BlackBerry maker appraised the Home Minister and his team about the security features of BlackBerry devices and it was decided the issue needed to be discussed at length with concerned officials.

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The meeting of the officials was aimed at finalising a strategy on Blackberry phones, which is facing the threat of being blocked in the country, if the telecom service providers do not address Government’s security concerns. Incidentally private telecom operators were not part of the meeting.

Those at the meeting included senior officers of the Intelligence Bureau, Department of Telecommunications and the state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, besides home ministry officers dealing with internal security.

However, the meeting convened by Home Secretary G.K. Pillai with the officials of telecom companies which offer BlackBerry services didn't take place.

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"There was only an internal meeting. That's all I can say," said a senior official in the home ministry on the condition of anonymity, as he was not authorised to speak to the media on the matter.

The meeting with BlackBerry service providers was called to make it clear to them they were bound by the licence agreement to allow security agencies access to voice and data communications that pass through their networks.

The government also wanted to make it clear that the intention was not to intrude into the privacy of a BlackBerry device user but ensure that the country's security concerns are not compromised by misuse of the device by terrorists and insurgents.

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Meanwhile RIM has reportedly managed to reach an agreement with Saudi officials, who have suspended the move to ban BlackBerry Messenger services.

An official had said on Wednesday that India may decide to temporarily shut down BlackBerry Messenger and email services if Research In Motion does not address security concerns.

India says the Canadian smartphone maker's BlackBerry services could be misused by militants as security agencies cannot access the messages sent through these services.

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The country's security establishment took a hardline view on RIM's stance that it does not possess a "master key" to intercept data traffic on BlackBerry, insisting it needs access to encrypted messages in a "readable format".

Research in Motion has shipped over 100 million BlackBerry devices till date, with some 46 million active subscribers through 550 telecom carriers in more than 175 countries.

The company does not share country-specific data, but the number of BlackBerry users in India is estimated at around one million.

(With inputs from IANS)

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