The Department of Telecom (DoT) does not find the Blackberry email service threatening any more, reported the Economic Times. Telecom’s secretary Siddhartha Behura said that telecom companies do not require permission for offering similar value added services.
DoT had earlier criticised Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Reliance Communications for providing Blackberry services without sanction from the government. Under these circumstances, DoT had denied permission to Tata Teleservices to start similar services in March. Behura said that the government does not plan to stop such services.
Tata Teleservices maintained that they should also be allowed to provide the services as other companies were already doing so without permission. However, the government refused to give permission on the grounds that noncompliance by other companies was not a valid reason for granting permission. According to Tata Teleservices, the delay has affected its business as the others have already been providing these services.
The Indian security agencies were able to intercept encryption of 40 bits, while Blackberry used an encryption of 256 bits, which they were unable to intercept. The government security agencies were skeptical about Blackberry messages as these could be used by terrorist outfits for communication posing a threat to national security. The government was in talks with Research in Motion (RIM) regarding interception of Blackberry messages. Following discussions, RIM refused to shift its servers to India so that messages could be intercepted. RIM also refused provide keys to intercept its messages. The government then sought the help of foreign agencies to intercept the messages.
Now the government claims that Blackberry poses no threat. However, the reason behind the sudden change in attitude on the side of the government is not clear.
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