New Delhi, Aug 16: Research In Motion, the maker of Blackberry phones, agreed to fall in line with demands of the government and provide “manual” access of the widely-used Blackberry Messenger service to Indian security agencies from September 1.
The Union home ministry had wanted RIM to provide security agencies with “direct” access to the BBM service by August 31 or face closure of the service.
Manual access to BBM service means that Central agencies can ask RIM for interception of BBMs on a case-to-case basis. Once direct access is provided, agencies will be able to intercept the BBM service on their own.
However, RIM, a Canada-based firm, said more discussions were required for giving access to BlackBerry Entreprise Services (BES). This service continues to face the threat of a ban till the RIM agrees to give legal access of the service.
RIM had said its services like email and voicemail can be intercepted by security agencies. The home ministry is likely to convene a meeting of experts of the Department of Telecom, Intelligence Bureau and National Technical Research Organisation on Tuesday to discuss RIM’s “technical solution”.