The Department of Telecom has asked Mobile phone manufacturer Nokia to stop their Pushmail service because of security reasons. Nokia has been providing push email services for companies and consumers through compatible Nokia mobile phones and helps them to manage multiple email accounts from widely used email services like Yahoo, Gmail, MSN, etc. Now they have been asked to temporarily shut down the service until they have a legal monitoring system.
The Ministry of Home Affairs said in a communication to Department of Telecom that, “In view of the Intelligence Bureau’s report, Department of Telecommunications is requested to advice the Telecom Service Providers not to launch Nokia’s proposed pushmail/powermail service without putting in place monitoring facilities to the satisfaction of the LEAs.”
The government had also approached Research in Motion (RIM) makers of Blackberry mobile phones to come out with a solution to seize its Enterprise mail services by March 31, which has been already expired.
Due to various violations, the home ministry has told the DoT and the IT ministry to make necessary changes in the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885, the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2007 and the Rules under Telegraph & IT Acts to ensure operator compliance with the demands of the security agencies. The amendments will make sure that telecom service providers have monitoring system to deliver authorised intercepts based on telephone numbers, device identity, email IDs, IP addresses or keywords to the national security agencies on real-time basis.