The time limit to provide encryption keys of enterprise services of Blackberry has already expired. Research in motion (RIM), the company managing Blackberry services, is still maintaining that it has no control over the encryption keys residing at the sets of users.However, Indian government is not accepting this argument of Blackberry and is still asking for the keys. Since the deadline is already over, it is obvious that Blackberry would get another breath of life in India.
Meanwhile, Telecom Secretary R. Chandrasekhar said the access to corporate emails sought by India's security agencies is not specific to RIM. However, the government has not sent any requests seeking access to any other companies, he said. Of course, he is hinting towards encrypted Gmail and Skype services.
This deadlock is not going to be solved very soon. However, government of India has forgotten a more important issue associated with this exercise. It is very easy to get information in plain text in real time but it is an altogether different game when it comes to decrypting a highly encrypted message.
Encryption is not limited to Blackberry services alone. There are many great free encryption software that Indian security agencies would never be able to defeat. This is so because Indian security agencies are taking the easy route rather than developing good and effective cyber forensics capabilities.
