The Indian government has finally decided to jointly work with the Blackberry makers, Research in Motion (RIM) to address the much-debated and long-running data encryption saga.

Over the past few months, Canadian outfit RIM and the government have been holding talks to resolve the encryption concern. Earlier, The DoT had even asked RIM for the message encryption key for accessibility to content transfers but RIM had refused as it seems to be against their policy to allow any third party to access the information exchanged over its network.

Last week, Indian Government agencies - the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Indian Intelligence bureau (IB) and National Technical Research organisation (NTRO) - ha successfully carried out tests on Blackberry users on  Reliance Communications, Vodafone, Airtel and BPL Mobile to track and monitor the exchange of Blackberry data.

The Minister of State for IT and Communication Jyotiraditya Scindia said that an Indian technical team is working with RIM to sort out the issue of data security. Scindhia assured that all the security-related concerns would definitely get resolved.    

Scindhia added that the Ministry of Home Affairs is looking after the security aspect of Blackberry to ensure that the service doesn't harm anyone.    

Security agencies have confirmed the vulnerability of the system which can even result in misuse against the national interests. Security agencies have also asked the DoT to take strict measures to stop traffic spillover to other countries.

The Police claim that the terror mails sent by a terrorist outfit before the recent blasts in India went through a WiFi network.  The security agencies have demanded to restrict Blackberry services owing to the misuse of these high-tech networks by the terrorists. But the telecom ministry ruling out such move had said that there are no plans to ban Blackberry.

When contacted, a security official declined to reveal any further procedural details to be taken up to resolve the blackberry concern.

RIM is also shying away from commenting on the latest development. X

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Indian Government successfully cracks Blackberry code