India provides RIM with a 60-day breather, as the company was facing a ban ultimatum in India. BlackBerry manufacturer RIM has been in the news, unfortunately not for great reasons. Outside of the troubles in India, the company has received ban notices from governments in UAE and Saudia Arabia. The reason behind this ban campaign is the inability to monitor BlackBerry traffic.

By default all messages from the BlackBerry are encrypted and sent to a server in Canada. There is no backdoor feature to access this information and this is the root of the problem that government officials have cited. The governments advocate that monitoring communication is important to keep check on any terrorist activity, but RIM is holding fast to the integrity of its security systems.  This has not come without some contradictory statements that have emerged in the past few weeks, as RIM continues to fce pushback from several international entities.

Nevertheless, RIM have been in negotiations with the governments to resolve the issue. They have reached an agreement with the Saudi Government and are near a solution for the Indian market. BBC News reports,

RIM has said it will support the country’s need for “lawful access,” But it maintains that it does not do “specific deals” with countries.  The firm said earlier that it had offered to “lead an industry forum focused on supporting the lawful access needs of law enforcement agencies”.

It said that the forum – which would include other telecoms firms – would work with the Indian government to develop “policies and processes aimed at preventing the misuse of strong encryption technologies”.

It should also be noted that BlackBerry is not the only one using encryption.  You can check out this previous post on Silicon Angle to get some further insight on this situation.