New message

New Delhi, Aug. 30: Canada’s Research in Motion (RIM) today gave in to the government’s demands to set up a server in India, enabling security agencies to intercept emails and messages travelling between its BlackBerry smartphones.

In the interim period, RIM has provided certain monitoring methods to help the intelligence agencies read corporate emails sent and received on BlackBerrys on a real-time basis from next month.

The home ministry had set a deadline of August 31 for RIM to come up with a solution for monitoring encrypted data or face termination of its services.

The home ministry will review the feasibility of the monitoring methods over the next 60 days, before giving RIM a clean chit to continue BlackBerry services.

Sources said the home ministry also expected RIM to come up with plans for the enterprise server in the next two months.

“To give security agencies access to corporate emails in a readable format, an uncoded version of all corporate emails sent from the smartphone would be routed from the enterprise server (located on the premises of the company) to a monitoring system located with the mobile service providers offering BlackBerry services,” said sources.

Corporate email sent from a BlackBerry device remains in an un-encrypted or “readable” format only when it resides in the enterprise server.

When a BlackBerry device sends an email, it is coded by the smartphone and sent to the server located within the premises of an enterprise.

The server decodes the message and sends it to the recipient BlackBerry server, where it remains in a decrypted form. When the message is pushed to the recipient BlackBerry device, it is again coded or encrypted by the enterprise server.

Nokia move

Finnish handset maker Nokia today said it would have an enterprise server in India from November to allow the monitoring of its push-mail services.

“We have been working towards installing the requisite infrastructure in the country and will set up servers for our push email service by November 5, 2010,” D. Shivakumar, managing director of Nokia India, said.