Islamabad, August 25: Why is the government pressurising the Canadian company, Research in Motion, to hand over the encryption keys for its popular BlackBerry device?
Sources said the decision goes back to the Mumbai terror attacks of November 26-29, 2008, during which the terrorists used the BlackBerry extensively to communicate with their handlers in Pakistan.
Following the 26/11 attacks, the Intelligence Bureau submitted a dossier to the home ministry, included in which was a section on how the terrorists monitored the police operation using technology and exchanged e-mails over their BlackBerry devices.
So popular is the BlackBerry among the terror network that sources in the Intelligence Bureau told rediff.com that one out of 10 terrorists today use it.
It is a known fact among intelligence circles that the Lashkar-e-Tayiba has in place a competent technical cell that is aware that Indian security agencies do not have access to the encryption keys, making it next to impossible for them to monitor e-mails transmitted on the Blackberry.
Although RIM has blinked a little and said it will share information with the Indian agencies, the latter is not happy about it.
“The problem is they have told us that information would be shared, but it would not be real time,” sources in the Intelligence Bureau told this correspondent. “Such information is of no use to us. Delay by even one day can prove fatal and if we agree to what they are saying then we will get information from them a week late, which is just not good enough.”
The IB’s 26/11 dossier points out that terrorist groups know that e-mails sent from computers and laptops can be traced by the intelligence agencies, and as a consequence the number of such traditional e-mails has fallen drastically.
Today the preferred mode of communication in the terror network seems to be the satellite phone and the BlackBerry, since they are confident that security agencies will not be able to track them.
To back their claim, IB sources pointed out that of late, most of the arrested terrorists have been found to be carrying such devices, procured under benami (false) identities and using fake documents.
Since the intelligence agencies are unable to track the terrorists’ e-mails, they have had to fall back on interrogation and confessions, which run the possibility of being denied in a court of law — and ultimately, a low rate of conviction.
Courtesy: rediffmail