BlackBerry Makers Introducing ‘Metadata' In India !

The Canadian firm Research in Motion (RIM), makers of the BlackBerry, has 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 in lawful interception.

According to minutes of the meeting between government officials and RIM, the RIM representatives explained that “the BlackBerry mobile device sends the encrypted email to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) located with the service provider. The BES decrypts the messages and sends it to email server of the service provider where it remains stored in decrypted form. Then the message is pushed to the BlackBerry device in encrypted form.”
After some persuasion, the representatives agreed that “they can provide the metadata of the message like Internet Protocol address of the BES and PIN and International Mobile Equipment Identity of the BlackBerry mobile,” sources said.

The metadata is loosely defined as data about data. It provides information about a certain item's content such as how large the picture is, the colour depth, the image resolution, when the image was created, and other data. A text document's metadata may contain information about how long the document is, who the author is, when the document was written, etc.
Uninterrupted access
However, the sources said the company's offer failed to enthuse the security agencies who sought an uninterrupted access to the messaging services on the BlackBerry platform.

The security agencies apprehend that the BlackBerry services in the present format posed a serious security threat. The government had said the onus of giving access to security agencies to monitor the information on these smart phones rested with the service providers. According to the licensing conditions, the service providers are liable to put in a mechanism to allow the security agencies to intercept any conversation or message of any subscriber whenever required.

As telecom service providers such as Airtel, Vodafone, RCom, Tatas and the government-run BSNL and MTNL are offering BlackBerry services, it is the responsibility of these operators to ensure that the security agencies get access to all services they offer. The RIM had said in a statement earlier: “We told the service providers in categorical terms that the government will allow them to offer those services which could be intercepted by the security agencies. If any service is not allowed to be intercepted, we will not allow them to run such services.”
Recently, the UAE and Saudi Arabia barred the BlackBerry services due to security risks.

Source: Hindu

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