India Demands Full BlackBerry Access

India rejected on Monday Research In Motion’s (RIM) offer to allow it only partial access to its BlackBerry data services, while neighbouring Pakistan reversed its earlier decision to restrict the popular smartphone’s services.

It was not immediately clear what the Indian government, which says it is driven by security concerns, would now do after the Canadian smartphone maker failed to fulfill demands to monitor encrypted corporate email by a Jan. 31 deadline.

RIM had previously said it was confident India would not ban its services. Earlier this month, RIM said it had given India the means to access its Messenger service ahead of the deadline but reiterated that it could not give the authorities access to monitor secure corporate emails. Home (Interior) Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told a news conference the government still wanted access to emails. “I think a decision will be taken today by the MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs),” Chidambaram added. RIM’s India-based spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Last year, India demanded access to all BlackBerry services as part of efforts to fight militancy and security threats over the Internet and through telephone communications, demands echoed by several other countries that have also tried, sometimes successfully, to restrict the popular smartphone.

Earlier on Monday, India’s neighbour Pakistan called on mobile phone operators to stop BlackBerry services to foreign missions amid concern about the security of the communications, industry sources said. But the instruction was later reversed.

RIM encrypts email messages as they travel between a BlackBerry device and a computer known as BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). The Canadian smartphone maker has said that it does not have a master key to decode emails, adding that each organisation would have the technical capability to grant access to its own encrypted enterprise email.