GSM telcos extend support to Blackberry-maker RIM

Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) Director- General Rajan S Matthews said it would be very difficult to help the government decrypt the millions of messages sent everyday using Blackberry services.

"If the government wants to intercept messages, we (operators) provide with the bit string information. The government must develop the expertise to decrypt messages. Encryption and decryption are government responsibilities. Operator cannot provide text messages to the government," he told PTI on the sidelines of a workshop on 'Radiation from Mobile Towers'.

He said all issues concerning BlackBerry handsets, except for RIM's Enterprise Mail solution, have been resolved.Earlier, India had raised concerns that BlackBerry's services could be used by anti-social elements to stir social instability.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has also expressed reservations and has been asking for a solution to decrypt data sent using Blackberry's corporate mail and messenger services.
RIM has to offer a final solution for interception of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) services by the end of January next year.

Mathews said the problem in decrypting Enterprise emails was that two parties were involved -- the enterprise and the operator."Without the enterprise cooperation, with one part of the key, you cannot decrypt. How can I get in to two million or three million enterprise servers? It is dynamic and it is a technical issue that has to be resolved," he said."If you ask me to provide decryption for all the applications we offer on our network, I will go out of the system tomorrow," he added.