RIM tells Indian government to work with enterprises for data access

BlackBerry smart phone maker Research In Motion (RIM) today said the Indian government has agreed to work with individual enterprises to access communications sent through BlackBerry enterprise services rather than press the phone maker for a permanent solution.

If accepted, this agreement would put the burden of providing data access on individual enterprises and save RIM millions of dollars in setting up servers in India.

Such an arrangement would also help RIM maintain its reputation of maintaining data security while complying with government demand for access to messages sent through BlackBerry phones.

"The Government has acknowledged that any potential policy or approach that requires lawful access to strongly encrypted enterprise data sent to or from corporate and government organisations ... would need to occur through the enterprise customers themselves since RIM has no ability to provide the customers' encryption keys," RIM said in a statement.

All through its long-drawn discussions with the Indian authorities, the Canadian phone manufacturer has been holding the view that it does not have access to its customers' encryption keys and therefore cannot provide access to their data.

RIM's comment comes after the government on Friday said that it was still unable to monitor communications made through RIM's enterprise services.