RIM says no access to corporate email in India

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion on Thursday said there was no possibility of providing India access to corporate emails on BlackBerry devices.

India has demanded access to all BlackBerry services as part of efforts to fight militancy and security threats over the Internet and through telephone communications.

There is no possibility of us providing any kind of a solution, RIM vice president Robert Crow told reporters. There is no solution, there are no keys to be handed.

RIM has been buffeted by demands for access to its encrypted data from several countries worried about security and social mores.

Earlier this month, RIM said it would filter pornographic internet content for BlackBerry users in Indonesia, following government pressure to restrict access to porn sites or face its browsing service being shut down.

Last year, the company narrowly escaped a ban in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Neither side disclosed what RIM did to get itself onside with UAE telecom regulations.

RIM encrypts email messages as they travel between a BlackBerry device and a computer known as BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).

The company has said it does not have a master key to decode emails, adding that each organization would have the technical capability to grant access to its own encrypted enterprise email.

The Canadian company earlier this month gave India access to its Messenger service.

We are confident that it meets the requirements, Crow said of the access to its Messenger service.

Crow has led RIM's talks with the Indian government and has been meeting officials from the interior ministry and security agencies frequently. He will meet officials again over the course of his current visit.

Certainly my perception is there is a broader recognition and appreciation that this is not an issue unique to BlackBerry, he said.

BlackBerry represents a very small fraction of the total population of VPN (virtual private networks) in India. There may be more than a million VPNs in India with high security architecture, he added.

(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Writing by Prashant Mehra; Editing by Jui Chakravorty)