India Starts BlackBerry Investigation Over RIM Security Denial

RIM's denial earlier this week that it had installed a messaging monitoring system at the behest of the Indian government has prompted more BlackBerry confusion, with the statement accused of conflicting with assurances made by RIM execs earlier in December 2010. According to information passed to The Economic Times, RIM's VP of industry, government and university relations had told the Indian government that monitoring technology to "receive and process via the cloud computing-based system, lawfully intercepted BlackBerry messenger data" had indeed been installed.

"We are happy to confirm that as per the compliance schedule agreed by both Research in Motion and the Ministry Of Home Affairs, RIM infrastructure is ready to receive and process via the cloud computing-based system, lawfully intercepted BlackBerry messenger data from India service providers" Robert E Crow, vice-president of industry, government and university relations, RIM

The confusion appears to have arisen over the "lawfully intercepted" element of Crow's statement, which would seem to tally with RIM's assurances earlier this week that "there will be no change to the security model of BlackBerry Enterprise Service" and that information disclosure would only be made upon correctly-submitted legal requests. In contrast, Indian security forces have been asking for real-time monitoring abilities and less restricted access to BlackBerry messages. The Indian government has apparently ordered its telecoms division to test the cloud-computing monitoring system to validate RIM's supposed claims.