RIM CEO: the Internet is encrypted, deal with it

By on Aug 5, 2010 at 6:48 AM
Security August 5, 2010

If you haven’t been following the soap opera that is going on between the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and RIM let us fill you in. The UAE and KSA will halt BlackBerry data services beginning October 11th and August 5th respectively citing concerns over national security. For the most part, RIM has remained quiet noting the delicate and sensitive nature of talks at the state level. However, that all changed yesterday. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that RIM CEO Michael Lazaridis has released a statement saying, “This is about the Internet. Everything on the Internet is encrypted. This is not a BlackBerry-only issue. If they can’t deal with the Internet, they should shut it off.” We’re assuming when Mr. Lazaridis says “everything on the Internet is encrypted” he is referring to SSL and the like. The BlackBerry maker CEO continued, “We have dealt with this before. This will get resolved. And it will get resolved if there is a chance for rational discussion.” We say good for RIM. What do you think?

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  • FlyingPig

    Terrorism?

    So terrorists don’t have laptops with a VPN installed? And other phone manufactures don’t have software capable of encrypting messages?

    And Androids don’t spend half their time connecting back to the new Borg mother ship somewhere in darkest CA (i.e. outside of UAE)?

    [What they want is your habits and location to supplement the marketing intelligence they sell for big bucks].

    Seems to me the timing of this UAE issue to coincide with RIM’s launch of the 9800 is not a coincidence.

    It’s certainly not security, since BlackBerry doesn’t have a monopoly on encrypted technologies even if it’s solution is the most secure “out of the box”.

    The history of these “security” issues with BlackBerrys in various countries seems to be resolved when RIM spends lots of cash in the said country.

    Perhaps not enough palms have been greased.

  • Stanfrisco

    The best kind of advertising in this web-ravaged world we live. Perhaps there’s a security silver lining for RIM from all this fracus.

  • J Mehoff

    NSA already monitors every BB message at the carrier level before they reach the “Encrypted” RIM servers.

    What? You thought acres of cray supercomputers at FT. Meade MD were just for show?

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