France Bans BlackBerries In Govt. On Fears of Spying

DesertBlade writes "French government officials are no longer allowed to use BlackBerries for official correspondence. The reason? Fear that the US government will snoop out French national secrets via RIM's network. From the article: '"The risks of interception are real. It is economic war," daily Le Monde quoted Alain Juillet, in charge of economic intelligence for the government, as saying. With BlackBerries, there is "a problem with the protection of information," he said. Juillet's office confirmed that he spoke to Le Monde but said he would not talk to other reporters. Officials at the presidential Elysee Palace and the prime minister's office were not immediately available for comment. Le Monde said information sent from BlackBerries goes through servers in the United States and Britain, and that France fears that the U.S. National Security Agency can snoop.'"

Comments

Industrial Espionage

[BgJonson79]

I thought France was regarded as being very, very good at industrial espionage. Shouldn't we be afraid of them?

Seems rational

[Chairboy]

This seems like a perfectly rational precaution. For five every crazed conspiracy theory where random Joe Public runs around screaming that the NSA is decrypting his SSL'd eBay login information and/or listening for words like "bomb" and "president" on his phone calls to his mother, there's one very legitimate precaution like this.

The real news story would be any government organization, US or foreign, that _WAS_ entrusting valuable national secrets to a third party vendor anywhere. The US isn't the only country with ELINT, and unless you have a network that doesn't require external trust (eg, the encryption is done server side or via a proprietary program that could be compromised) there's every reason NOT to make it easy for someone to profit at your expense.

The minute God crapped out the third cave man, a conspiracy was hatched against one of them. You don't need to be a tin-foil wearing, taxi driving crazypants to know this.

France, of course, knows about this stuff

[ab762]

because they pursue it themselves: see this or Google "economic espionage" and France. And this 1992 item about Air France's involvement in bugging first class seats.

I recall being told never to trust the shredders in French hotel rooms: they may have a scanner. Can't find that online, though.

It's been going on longer than that

[spun]

This has nothing to do with our present executive, much as I love to blame anything I can on Bush. Our intelligence community has always depended on help from large American corporations. In return for them providing cover for our operatives overseas, we provide them with useful business intelligence.

This was why Australia tried to withdraw from Echelon, and outed the project when we whined. We refused to let them redact sensitive information regarding Australian businesses from the data, and they knew we were using it against them even though we were partners in the project.

Re:It's not unreasonable

[gmajor]

Do you think it's illegal, immoral, or unethical for the intelligence community to spy on other governments? If it is, then why isn't there any uproar on Russia spying on us, or China, or even France?

I'm afraid that the USA makes an easy target for outrage and will always be an easy target.

Spying is necessary. Every nation is looking out for its own self interests. Spying on government entitites is fair game. Spying on your own citizens is not. It is a very fine ethical line but as long as the focus is foreign governments, they are on the right side of that ethical line.

Re:Is RIM really that stupid?

[Mr Z]

That's only true if you audit the entire Blackberry software stack for side-channel information leaks at the machine code level. I refer you to Ken Thompson's classic, Reflections on Trusting Trust. I've actually worked with a vendor that has tools for embedding special kinds of sentinels in object code, taking an even more direct and undetectable route than Ken did.

They're right to be wary.

--Joe

Industrial Espionage in France

[jjohnson]

A friend in university went to France for the summer to work for a French manufacturer. Once there, he was informed that his job was to gain employment at a competitor and steal marketing and product development material. Being a future lawyer, he ignored the ethically problematic aspects of the work, but with due mind for the legal consequences of getting caught, took the job(s), performed admirably, and collected two paycheques all summer.

So when the French are worried about economic espionage, we probably all should be.