RIM Insists "No Possibility" Of BlackBerry Backdoor For India

RIM has told the Indian government that there is no way that it can supply covert access to encrypted emails sent using BlackBerry smartphones, in the process risking finding its service in the country cut off over security concerns. The denial is the latest in a back & forth battle between the Canadian company and the Indian security forces, over concerns that BlackBerry phones will be used by terrorists and dissidents to communicate, and RIM's persistent claims that a monitoring system would be technologically infeasible.

"There is no possibility of us providing any kind of a solution," RIM vice president Robert Crow insists, "there is no solution, there are no keys to be handed." Instead, Crow suggests, individual Indian companies would have to hand over their own encryption keys to the government. Still, there are hopes that India's security forces will be content with the BlackBerry messenger access RIM has already granted.