New Delhi, Aug 8: Blackberry has made a fresh attempt to  break the logjam over its services in India by offering “metadata”  and relevant information to security agencies which will enable them  in lawful interception but has failed to enthuse them.
According to minutes of the meeting between government officials and Canadian firm Research in Motion (RIM), makers of BlackBerry,  RIM representatives explained that BlackBerry mobile device sends  the encrypted email which is sent to BlackBerry Enterprise Server  (BES) located with the service provider.
BES decrypts the messages and sends it to email server of the  service provider where it remains stored in decrypted form. Then  the message is pushed to the BlackBerry device in encrypted form.
After some persuasion, the representatives agreed that “they  can provide the metadata of the message like Internet Protocol address  of BES and PIN and International Mobile Equipment Identity of the  BlackBerry mobile,” sources said.
Metadata is loosely defined as data about data. It provides  information about a certain item’s content like how large the picture  is, the colour depth, the image resolution, when the image was created,  and other data. A text document’s metadata may contain information  about how long the document is, who the author is, when the document  was written, and a short summary of the document.
However, the sources said the RIM, which has nearly one million  subscribers in India, failed to enthuse the security agencies who  want an uninterrupted access to the messaging services on BlackBerry platform. The security agencies apprehend that BlackBerry services in  the present format posed a serious security threat.
The government had said the onus of giving access to security  agencies to monitor the information on these smart phones lies with  the service providers.
According to the licensing conditions, the service providers  are liable to put in a mechanism to allow the security agencies to  intercept any conversation or message of any subscriber whenever required.
As telecom service providers like Airtel, Vodafone, RCom, the  Tatas and the government-run BSNL and MTNL are offering BlackBerry  services, it is the responsibility of these operators to ensure that  the security agencies get access to all services they offer.
RIM had said in a statement earlier that “We told the service providers in categorical terms that the government will allow  them to offer those services which could be intercepted by the security  agencies. If any service is not allowed to be intercepted, we will  not allow them to run such services.”
While expressing its inability to share access, RIM had said  yesterday that the security architecture for its enterprise customers  is based on a symmetric key system whereby the customers create their  own key and only they possess the copy of the encryption.
RIM, which operates in 175 countries, said, “While RIM does  not disclose confidential discussions that take place with any government,  RIM assures its customers that it is committed to delivering highly  secure and innovative products that satisfy the needs of both customers  and governments.”
Recently, the UAE and Saudi Arabia barred the BlackBerry services  due to security risks.

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