Click to play videoNew Delhi: The controversy over BlackBerry services has now sparked off a major diplomatic row.
After BB services came under threat for their potential misuse by terrorists, Canada has sent a strongly worded letter to the Department of Telecommunication asking who in India is the competent and empowered authority to resolve the issue.
The Canadian High Commissioner has sent a letter to the Telecom minister, questioning his department’s approach in resolving the issue with Canadian company RIM.
The letter by David R Malone, Canadian High Commissioner says, “We and RIM need to understand who in the government of India is the competent authority to resolve the issue. The discussions managed by DoT have inspired little confidence and Indian government's demands of RIM keep expanding”.
RIM or Research in Motion, is a Canadian firm that offers wireless communications worldwide under its BlackBerry label. In India, the service has been available through mobile operators since 2004. However, last year when the government realised that it's security agencies cannot monitor such wireless communications, threatened to disallow BlackBerry services.
To that threat Canada says that if this were to happen, RIM would be excluded from a major potential market and Indians would be denied access to the personal communications device of choice among senior business and government officials around the world.
To protect client privacy, all BlackBerry emails and SMSes are encrypted and sent through servers abroad. The government wants RIM to place a server in India, and give them the key to decrypt the messages. Though there have been nearly five rounds of talks, the issue is far from being resolved.
“BlackBerry issue has not been resolved. All stakeholders are still meeting and the Home Ministry is yet to resolve the issue of encryption. All options are being exploredm” says Communications and IT minister, A Raja.
The government will have to walk the tightrope between security concerns and commercial interests as more than four lakh BlackBerry users in the country will be keenly watching the result.
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