RIM, India To Continue Discussions Over BlackBerry Monitoring: Reports

Officials from India's government and RIM executives are planning to meet on Friday to discuss India's demand that the country can have the ability to monitor communications sent over BlackBerry devices in that country.

The two sides on Thursday met to discuss India's request to be able to monitor Research In Motion's BlackBerry corporate e-mail service after it set an August 31 deadline for a solution, the Dow Jones News Service reported.

After Friday's meeting, which includes officials of India's Intelligence Bureau and the National Technical Research Organization, Indian officials will discuss the issue over the weekend to prepare the government's response, Dow Jones reported.

Meanwhile, RIM on Thursday offered to lead a group of wireless industry companies to discuss the security concerns raised by the government of India, MarketWatch reported.

RIM has been facing questions from a number of developing countries, including India, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, over their concerns that the level of security encryption of its BlackBerry is so high that they are unable to monitor emails sent from the device.

These countries cite national security issues, including the ability to thwart terrorist activities, as reasons for needing that monitoring capability. RIM has responded in the past that it has no "back door" or encryption key that can be provided to allow such monitoring.

RIM has told India that placing BlackBerry networking infrastructure in India would not answer that country's concerns because the network would still work the same, and that shutting down the service in India would not work because other wireless messaging networks have similar security technologies, MarketWatch reported.