India granted limited BlackBerry Messenger access

The maker of the BlackBerry smartphone has granted India's government manual access to its Messenger service and has promised automated access by January 1, enabling authorities to track such messages in real time, the country's top interior ministry official said.

India, one of the world's fastest growing mobile telephone markets, also wants access to encrypted email traffic sent via Research In Motion's enterprise servers. The BlackBerry maker says its system is designed so that only the sponsoring business or organization has the technical capability to grant such access. India, among several countries to express concerns BlackBerry services could be used to stir political or social instability, has threatened RIM with a ban if denied access to the data. RIM won a 60-day reprieve from India at the end of August after offering India a solution to monitor some BlackBerry data, a claim yet to be confirmed by the Canadian firm.