India defers decision on blocking Blackberry services

NEW DELHI: The Indian government Thursday deferred a decision on  blocking some BlackBerry phone services and decided to hold further  consultations with all stakeholders soon, Press Trust of India reported.
"The  meeting remained inconclusive. No decision has been taken and we will  hold further talks soon," a Home Ministry official said.

The meet  was convened by the ministry and attended by officials of the  Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and state-run service provider  Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).
The discussion was aimed at  finalising the government strategy on Blackberry phones which is facing  the threat of being blocked in the country if the telecom service  providers do not address the government's security concerns.

Meanwhile,  a top official of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion(RIM) - which has  nearly one million subscribers in the country and has a growing market -  paid a courtesy visit to Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
Last  week, BlackBerry 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 to lawfully intercept  communication on such phones but it failed to enthuse them.
RIM  representatives explained that BlackBerry mobile device sends encrypted  emails, which is sent to BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) located with  the service provider.

BES decrypts messages and sends it to the  email server of the service provider where it remains stored in  decrypted form. It is subsequently pushed to the BlackBerry device in  encrypted form.
-Bernama