Blackberry opens its traffic to government monitoring

The news follows the United Arab Emirates' threats to cut off BlackBerry services as authorities could not access encrypted data. RIM later pledged to satisfy both the needs of customers and governments.

The Economic Times newspaper reports that  RIM has offered to share with Indian security agencies its technical codes for corporate email services, open up access to all consumer emails within 15 days and also develop tools in six to eight months to allow monitoring of chats, the paper said, citing internal government documents.

RIM will provide further details on its proposals to the Indian telecoms ministry on Tuesday, the newspaper said.

A RIM India spokesman had no immediate comment on the report while a Telecoms Ministry spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

RIM on Monday pledged to satisfy the security needs both of customers and governments, a day after the United Arab Emirates threatened to cut off some BlackBerry services because authorities could not access encrypted messaging data.

India has raised security concerns with BlackBerry services, but is not planning a ban, the country's internal security chief said last week, adding the company had assured them that it would be addressing Indian government's concerns.

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