RIM Facility Helps India in Surveillance Efforts

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Research In Motion Ltd. has set up a facility in Mumbai to help the Indian government carry out lawful surveillance of its BlackBerry services, but the move hasn't fully satisfied India's appetite for access to messages on the popular smartphones.

Last year, India threatened to shut down BlackBerry encrypted email and instant messaging services because it couldn't wiretap them. The government put the onus on RIM to come up with solutions. Several government-set deadlines have passed and, though India still isn't happy with its surveillance capabilities, it is no longer threatening to shut down the service. RIM partly assuaged India by setting up the small Mumbai facility earlier this year to handle surveillance requests from India. India can submit the name of a suspect its investigators want to wiretap, and RIM will return decoded messages for that individual, as long as it is satisfied the request has legal authorization. The Mumbai facility handles lawful intercept requests for consumer services including the BlackBerry Messenger chat service, these people say. India saw the move as a positive step, but would prefer an arrangement where it has the ability to decode messages itself, so that it can conduct surveillance without disclosing the names of suspects to RIM.


RIM Facility Helps India in Surveillance Efforts