By PTI

New Delhi: Blackberry vendor Research-In- Motion (RIM) said on 26 May it cannot hand over the message encrytion key to the government as its security structure does not allow any ‘third party’ or even the company to read the information transferred over its network.

“The Blackberry security architecture for enterprise customers is purposefully designed to exclude the capability for RIM or any third party to read encrypted information under any circumstances,” the company said in a statement.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) and the security agencies had asked the Canadian company to provide the master key to it so that it can access the contents transferred over the handheld device.

Assuring lakhs of cutomers, who were concerned over the fate of Blackberry services, RIM said: “We regret any concern prompted by incorrect speculation or rumours and wish to assure customers that RIM is committed to continue serving security-conscious business in the Indian market.”

The BlackBerry issue came into the open earlier this year when DoT asked Tata Teleservices to delay its launch till security mechanisms are in place.

DoT is understood to have proposed an interim solution through which all data between Blackberry users are stored on the servers of the telcos for a year.

But the talks between the government and RIM have not produced any solution to the monitoring problem so far. Blackberry data traffic is at present not accessible by Indian security agencies.

DoT has been demanding RIM to set up servers in India so that its traffic could be monitored by the security agencies, a demand RIM has not agreed to so far.