Responding to news reports "rehashing a two-year-old rumour," the developer of the BlackBerry handheld device denied Wednesday that outsiders — including the U.S.National Security Agency — can access data sent with it.

"No one, including RIM, has the ability to view the content of any data communication sent using the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution because all the data is encrypted using 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption," a statement from Research in Motion said Wednesday, "and the origin of the e-mails cannot be traced or analyzed for content."

Reports this week in the French newspaper Le Monde, and widely circulated outside France, stated that French government officials had been barred from using the devices because of fears that data on servers outside the country would not be secure.

"The risks of interception are real. It is economic war," Le Monde quoted Alain Juillet, in charge of economic intelligence for the government, as saying.

With BlackBerrys, there is "a problem with the protection of information," he said.

France's General Secretariat for National Defence issued a circular prohibiting BlackBerrys 18 months ago and later renewed it, the newspaper said.

Le Monde quotes an unnamed source as saying that despite the ban, the devices are still being used in secret.