After years of wrangling, BlackBerry (formerly known as RIM) has finally agreed to give the Indian government the ability to intercept data sent over BlackBerry devices.
According to leaked Indian government documents seen by the Times of India, "the lawful intereception system for BlackBerry Services is ready for use".
Once implemented, the system will allow the Indian government to track emails and email attachments in real time; to see when BBM messages have been delivered and read; and to intercept web browsing data, according to the report.
Crucially, the Indian government appear to have dropped previous demands to have access to BlackBerry's Enterprise servers, which carries BlackBerry's corporate email services. Instead, BlackBerry will have to notify the authorities about which companies are using the Enterprise service.
The soon-to-be-signed agreement will potentially end years of disagreements between BlackBerry and the Indian government, which at one point thre atened to shutdown BlackBerry email and messenger in India.
Since the 2008 Mumbai killings, the Indian government has pressured BlackBerry to give it access to users' data -- BlackBerry devices were reported to have been used by the terrorists in the attacks.
Similar pressure has been applied on the company across the world, including the UK and Saudi Arabia, which recently banned Viber after the company failed to give the Saudi government access to its users' messages.
According to the Times of India report, nine of the ten telecoms providers that carry BlackBerry's data will be implementing the intercept technology, which was reportedly demonstrated in Mumbai on 12 June on the Vodafone network.
BlackBerry issued the following statement: "BlackBerry has delivered a solution that enables India's wireless carriers to address their lawful access requirements for our consumer messaging services, which include BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) email. The lawful access capability now available to BlackBerry's carrier partners meets the standard required by the Government of India for all consumer messaging services offered in the Indian marketplace. We also wish to underscore, once again, that this enablement of lawful access does not extend to BlackBerry Enterprise Server".
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
