India will join in banning Blackberrys

THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT is considering a ban against Blackberrys similar to those of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

According to Reuters India's security establishment has decided to take a hard line view on RIM's stance that it does not possess a "master key" to intercept data traffic on its Blackberry smartphones.

The country apparently has warned that services that cannot be monitored will be shut down, with one Indian security official saying that any BlackBerry service that cannot be fully intercepted by security agencies must be discontinued.

Research in Motion (RIM) maintains that its Blackberry security allows customers to create their own keys and the company neither has a master key nor any "back door" to allow access.

RIM had offered to help the Indian government to help it track emails without sharing encryption details and earlier this week the security agencies said they were testing it.

Saudi Arabia ordered at least one Blackberry smartphone service to be blocked from Friday.

However it is not all bad news for the Blackberry. Although the bans shut it out of some developing markets, they also send a huge message to corporations and other customers that its communications are secure.

This could be critical as rivals like Android and the Iphone OS are perceived as less secure by the Blackberry's targeted audience. No international business will want to use a communications tool that can be monitored by security services.

In a statement this morning RIM said that it had spent over a decade building a very strong security architecture to meet its enterprise customers' strict security requirements around the world.

"It is a solution that we are very proud of, and it has helped us become the number one choice for enterprises and governments," it said.

RIM said that the idea that the company would provide, or had ever provided, something unique to the government of one country that it would not offer to the governments of all countries, is unfounded. µ