UAE to ban Blackberry from October
I wonder how quickly this will catch on with other "Big Brother" governments?
:mid:
Quote:
The UAE’s telecoms regulator has announced that BlackBerry services in the country will be suspended from 11 October this year.
The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said that the suspension was due to the failure of ongoing attempts since 2007 to bring BlackBerry services in the country in line with local regulations.
"With no solution available and in the public interest, in order to affect resolution of this issue, as of October 11, 2010, Blackberry Messenger, Blackberry Email and Blackberry Web-browsing services will be suspended until an acceptable solution can be developed and applied," TRA director general Mohamed Al Ghanim said in a statement.
"The TRA notes that Blackberry appears to be compliant in similar regulatory environments of other countries, which makes non-compliance in the UAE both disappointing and of great concern."
Speaking to newswire Reuters, Al Ghanim denied that the move was for the purposes of state censorship.
"It's a final decision but we are continuing discussions with them," he said. "Censorship has got nothing to do with this. What we are talking about is suspension due to the lack of compliance with UAE telecommunications regulations."
BlackBerry devices, introduced in the UAE in 2006, allow users to send messages that can’t be monitored as allowed for under the country’s 2007 Safety, Emergency and National Security rules, the regulator said last week.
Although such communications should fall under the remit of that law, technical encryption allowed them to avoid monitoring, it said Sunday.
Telcos Etisalat and du were informed of the TRA’s decision on Sunday. They were also instructed to ensure minimal consumer disruption in the provision of alternative services.
“All Blackberry services fall within the UAE regulatory framework developed by the TRA since 2007, however because of Blackberry's technical configuration, some Blackberry services operate beyond the enforcement of these regulations,” said a statement issued by the TRA.
“Blackberry data is immediately exported off-shore, where it is managed by a foreign, commercial organization. Blackberry data services are currently the only data services operating in the UAE where this is the case.
“Today's decision is based on the fact that, in their current form, certain Blackberry services allow users to act without any legal accountability, causing judicial, social and national security concerns for the UAE.”
Blackberry testing their cop out
RIM has developed a method that would let the Indian government spy on BlackBerry messages and avoid a possible ban, home ministry representative Onkar Kedia said on Monday. The unidentified method will be tested for the next 60 days and, if successful, will avoid a restriction that would have banned BES-based e-mail and BlackBerry Messenger effective tomorrow. RIM has yet to comment on the new approach.
The approach may prove controversial through RIM's approach to security. It has insisted that it would treat all countries equally and offer the same monitoring tools elsewhere. The step might avoid Saudi Arabian and UAE bans but may also make corporate customers leery. Many of them depend on the tightly encrypted nature of BlackBerry e-mail to keep information private, but the US and many other countries could now requests the Indian tool and potentially negate RIM's main advantage.
And our jingly friends want to snoop on more:
India has toughened its scrutiny of telecoms firms with a directive demanding "access to everything". An Indian Home Ministry official told the BBC that "any company with a telecoms network should be accessible".
"It could be Google or Skype, but anyone operating in India will have to provide data," he said.
The move follows high-profile talks with Blackberry maker Research in Motion about ways to allow Indian security forces to monitor data.
The government is also likely to target virtual private networks, which give secure access to company networks for employees working away from their offices.
