NEW DELHI/KOLKATA: The Intelligence Bureau has asked the telecom department to stop Nokia’s popular messaging services in India until they can be monitored, another sign of the growing discomfort of the country’s spooks with similar offerings they view as suspect from a security angle.
The security agency has written to the DoT that it is against the continuation of the Finnish company’s push email service for corporates and consumers that allows the easy management of multiple accounts, said a DoT official familiar with the matter. The communique, a copy of which is with ET, shows that this is not the first time that the agency has brought the issue to the DoT’s notice.
The IB had issued a similar warning against BlackBerry services, another mode of communication favoured by corporate clients, Google’s Gmail and internet telephony firm Skype earlier this month.
Nokia launched a beta version of the messaging service in April 2009. All leading cellular operators offer the service, which the company’s advertisements claim allows consumers to use up to 10 email accounts on the move.
The service became an instant hit, with the company signing up more than 1 lakh activations a month in India, vaulting it to the top five markets globally. Nearly 50% of Nokia’s E Series smartphones sold in the country get activated for emails.
A Nokia India spokesperson said its messaging email service is still in the beta format in India, and that “the requisite infrastructure required by security agencies is being put in place”. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, which has a million customers, and Nokia collectively account for nearly all the corporate email consumers on mobile phones in the country.
Though the IB warnings cast a shadow over their services, it remains to be seen if the DoT acts. The department is yet to move against BlackBerry, Gmail and Skype. The frustration running through the security establishment with DoT’s failure to act is evident in the communique.
“We had raised certain concerns/reservations with regard to security issues of monitoring arrangements, which remain unaddressed till date. But open advertisements in the market indicate Nokia is still going ahead with the launch of these services without addressing security concerns,” the IB said in the communique.
Similarly, the agency has again sought to turn the DoT’s gaze towards BlackBerry, saying services in their current format posed a security threat to the country. The IB had earlier asked DoT to give RIM a 15-day deadline to ensure that all data carries to and from India are in formats that can be read by national intelligence agencies.
After the IB aired its concerns, RIM corporate affairs director Siddartha Dasgupta wrote to telecom secretary PJ Thomas, stating the company wishes to “explain and clarify the standard manner in which data travels or is transmitted when a BlackBerry device is used by a consumer.”