The government on Thursday said the makers of BlackBerry, Research in Motion (RIM) had given an assurance to address its security concerns and allow security agencies to monitor emails and SMS services provided by it in India.
"BlackBerry had assured the Ministry of Home Affairs that the issue of monitoring the BlackBerry would be sorted out soon... I am sure we will soon be on the same page and our concerns will be addressed," the ministry's special secretary (internal security) U K Bansal said.
He said the ministry had already asked the telecommunication department to coordinate with the Canadian service provider and ensure its concerns are addressed at the earliest.
The government action came after key security agencies apprehended that BlackBerry services in the present format posed a serious security threat.
The MHA had warned RIM that it would close down BlackBerry's operations if the concerns were not addressed.
BlackBerry has been allowing access to the emails, SMSes and other data services in several other countries, including the US, where it operates, and the MHA believes it must comply with formats that can be monitored by Indian security and intelligence agencies, a government official said.
BlackBerry messages are encrypted. The company maintains that since its server is in Canada where the encryption level is very high and difficult to crack, a message going through a Canada server cannot be accessed by intelligence agencies.
In view of technical problems involved in accessing the data, the government has been pushing the service provider to set up a BlackBerry server in India so that its services can be easily monitored by security agencies.