RIM sets up Mumbai facility to monitor BlackBerry services

The Canadian owner of BlackBerry smartphone, Research In Motion (RIM) has providede access to Indian security agencies to carry out lawful surveillance of its BlackBerry services, The Wall Street Journal today reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

According to the report, RIM has set up a facility in Mumbai to help the Indian government carry out lawful surveillance of its BlackBerry services, including its Messenger and chat services, but the move still falls way short of what India is seeking from the Ontario-based company.

The Indian government had threatened to shut down BlackBerry services in the country if its call for monitoring of its services were not met (See: Government ready to boot out BlackBerry from India), after extending the deadline on several occasions.

Fed up with its dilatory tactics since 2008, India had demanded in August 2010 that RIM put a proxy server in the country or shut down its messenger and enterprise services.

A telecom official had said at that time, ''We do not care if the solution is to set up a server or tweak the programme... . There is a rule for networks to enable interception and we would like them to implement this rule. If they cannot, they will have to switch off.''

Earlier this year RIM set up a small facility in Mumbai to handle surveillance requests from Indian security agencies, to provide decrypted communications of RIM subscribers who may be under investigation, after the agencies have obtained relevant legal authorisation.