The Indian Home Ministry is examining a report submitted by a high-level panel of experts on a focused and practical approach to the issue of decrypting some of the encrypted communication in a readable format, a task with which India’s security agencies have encountered problems.
The government had set a deadline of Aug. 15 for Research in Motion to submit a plan for monitoring BlackBerry Messenger and its corporate email services. The government’s contention is that terrorists could use secured BlackBerry services to communicate.
The Indian junior minister for telecommunications and information technology, Milind Deora, told Parliament that the security agencies are able to access the telecom services, including BlackBerry, through the lawful interception and monitoring facilities provided by the Telecom Service Provider.
However, security agencies have suggested that they are not able to decrypt some encrypted communications to a readable format, he added.
The technical committee established by the government analyzed all these issues in order to work out an appropriate solution to the problem which balances the requirements of security agencies with the secured communication needs of trade, commerce and industry, Deora said.
“The complexities involved in the issue resulted in committee being unable to come out with unanimous conclusive recommendations. Therefore the report of the committee and the comments of some of the members on the report were referred to a high level pane of experts who have since submitted their final recommendations on a focused and practical approach to the entire issue which has been forwarded to Ministry of Home Affairs,” Deora said.
The Home Ministry is now examining these recommendations.
