New Delhi:
The makers of Blackberry have agreed to give the government access to the hand held device's messenger services. This is a breakthrough in a massive stand-off between the Indian government and the company that owns Blackberry over how much access the government can have in the interest of national security.
Executives from Research in Motion or RIM, the Canadian firm that owns Blackberry, met Home Ministry officials this afternoon. Messenger signals are currently scrambled; the government will now get the pin number and code for every Blackberry phone in the country.
The government has said Blackberry will be banned in India unless it was given access to encrypted mails and Messengers services.
In a statement on Friday, RIM said that it was willing to provide "lawful access" to its services.
The company said that while it supports governments all over the world in requirements that arise from national security, it cannot be asked to provide customers' encryption keys.
It says it doesn't have the ability to do this anywhere in the world and that its security architecture is the same across the globe - a sign that reports that it has made concessions in countries like Saudi Arabia are incorrect.
(Read: Full Text of RIM's Statement on Blackberry Battle)RIM also indicated in the same statement that it is not willing to allow governments to access data from BlackBerrys if security agencies are not monitoring in the same way the data being exchanged on smartphones made by its competitors.