BlackBerry maker 'optimistic' over averting India ban

The developments came as India's showdown with handset maker RIM threatened to widen and embroil Google's GMail and Skype.

NEW DELHI // BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) said it was "optimistic" it could avert a threatened shutdown by India of the core features of the popular smartphone over security worries. A delegation from the Canadian firm met India's Home Secretary GK Pillai to discuss the government's warning it would ban BlackBerry's corporate email and messaging unless it gave security agencies access to the encrypted services. "I am optimistic," Robert Crowe, vice-president of Research in Motion, told reporters following the half-hour talks in New Delhi aimed at helping resolve the security issues before India's end-of-the month deadline. BlackBerry has proposed "technical solutions" to meet India's security concerns but they must be evaluated to see whether they would be satisfactory, a government official said later, without elaborating. India, which has the fastest growing number of cellular subscribers, is a coveted market for RIM, which already has 1.1 million BlackBerry customers in the country. The developments came as India's showdown with BlackBerry threatened to widen and embroil Google's GMail email service and the Internet telephony firm Skype, with the country seeking access to any encrypted data that might be used by militant groups to evade monitoring by Indian security agencies. "These are all issues that are being deliberated from a security point of view," a government official told AFP, and would be addressed in turn. The government, fearing that extremists could use Blackberry's heavily encrypted messaging system to coordinate attacks, has given RIM until August 31 to meet its demand for security access. India is battling insurgencies from Kashmir in the northwest to the far-flung northeast and mounting Maoist unrest. Islamist gunmen used mobile and satellite phones to coordinate the brazen three-day assault on Mumbai in 2008 that killed 166 people. India's telecom operators, already forced by the government to conform to tough new security regulations on importing equipment to ensure it is not embedded with "spyware", declined to comment on the ultimatum to BlackBerry. "We have to wait to see how the story unfolds, it is a very fluid situation," said an executive at one wireless company. Sanjay Kapoor, South Asia chief of top mobile operator Bharti Airtel, said earlier in the week: "Of course, we're aligned to the government as far as national security interests are concerned. We just hope customer interests are also protected." The Indian deadline came after Saudi Arabia on Tuesday postponed imposing a BlackBerry ban as the ultra-conservative Muslim country reported progress in solving its own security concerns. The United Arab Emirates, however, has said it will ban BlackBerry messenger, email and web browsing services from October 11 for security reasons. In response to the Indian threat, RIM said in a written statement it tried to be as cooperative as possible with governments "in the spirit of supporting legal and national security requirements". But it also wanted to preserve "the lawful needs of citizens and corporations". Analysts have noted other security-conscious countries such as China and Russia appear to be satisfied over their intelligence agencies' level of access to BlackBerry communications. Quoting minutes from a meeting between Indian officials and telecom and Internet providers, the Financial Times said the government wanted a broad solution to enable possible interception and monitoring of all Internet-based traffic, including Skype and Google. Google is already locked in tension with Beijing over state censorship and cyber-attacks that the US company says originated in China, the world's largest online market with 420 million users. * Agence France-Presse