A government panel has recommended that BlackBerry be asked to provide access to 'PIN' details of all its handsets across the globe to enable intelligence agencies in the country to track messages exchanged between Indian subscribers and those living abroad.
Currently, Canada's BlackBerry has provided PIN details of handsets "that have been officially shipped to India and has not provided data pertaining to other countries due to privacy and legal provisions", according to a telecom department (DoT) report reviewed by ET.
Each BlackBerry handset has a unique pin that cannot be changed and is locked to the phone. The panel in its report, dated 31 December, has said that if incoming and outgoing messages from BlackBerry users abroad to customers here can only be tracked if the government has access to PIN details of the "entire world".
Such demands are unlikely to be acceptable to BlackBerry and may reinforce perceptions that India is a difficult place to do business.
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