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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.'"
I'm sure there will be an avalanche of French jokes (looking forward to some good ones!), but as silly as it may seem, put that in the context of past and present behavior of our executive branch and their reach with the "Intelligence" Community. Entirely plausible, even likely.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The country that is accused of spying on AirFrance aircraft?
http://www.iht.com/articles/1991/09/14/spy_.php/
I thought France was regarded as being very, very good at industrial espionage. Shouldn't we be afraid of them?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
I don't think it's unreasonable for a foreign government to suspect that our government is not currently obeying any laws, morals, or ethics where snooping on electronic information is concerned.
Even when laws are obeyed they differ from country to country, and one country might not appreciate the latitude (or lack of it) in the way another country handles information and espionage.
1. name a network that US Spy agencies can't spy on if they wanted to, regardless of national affiliation. why is RIM any different?
2. would a Canadian like to clear their throat and defend a Canadian company accused of complicity with US Spying? seems like France is insulting Canada more than the US here
i think the real culprit here is economic competition. it's not outright economic protectionism, but it's a shrewd effort at spreading FUD to protect the real goal: the nurturing of a Fench homegrown RIM alternative
maybe the French are just pissed that the Internet didn't grow from Minitel
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
Blackberries can't do S/MIME? Every other email client on the planet can do that. If RIM just built S/MIME support into their products, then it wouldn't matter at all who routed through what and where.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
You always fear most the evils that you yourself would commit.
Thieves fear theft, liars fear that others are lying, backstabbers fear backstabbing... and the French fear economic espionage. Hmmmm. I wonder what the French might be up to?
The French should know a thing or two about spying. They've been widely reported to engage in corporate spying against U.S. corporate interests. As an American, I say this is fair game (if the U.S. chooses this route).
http://www.iht.com/articles/1991/09/14/spy_.php - an article about this from 1991.
I recall being told never to trust the shredders in French hotel rooms: they may have a scanner. Can't find that online, though.
Personally, I don't understand how/why these devices can be used by anyone, really, who cares for the privacy/secrets. The connection to your mail-server is not secured at all.
Even if device->RIM connection is secure (which is not certain, for they are using a proprietary protocol, AFAIK), you have to trust your privacy to RIM, a Canadian company foreign to most of its users.
Sure, they have a good incentive to keep your privacy, but it would be better still to just use an end-to-end secure connection directly to your servers (via IMAPS, for example). Devices capable of that are becoming available, and the wireless networks grow as well... RIM exploded in prominence because it did not use Internet Protocol and was able to deliver relatively light and power-efficient devices to do the job.
But technology is quickly eliminating that advantage — and the French may help create a better alternative, for a change.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I am not surprised. The US Government does not particularly like them either. They are not considered secure devices by anyone's standard. I used to work at a large contractor and whenever some idiot manager had accidentally forwarded their classified emails to their to a blackberry there was always a lot of yelling and head rolling. The person had to basically give up their PDA for a week while the security guys sanitized the device. I believe the emails are actually stored on blackberry's emails servers so they even had to contact them to remove said emails.
If I were worried about security I wouldn't think twice about banning them, no matter what country the mail servers were in. That being said, our govt and I am sure the French govt have skiffs for the really higher classification stuff.
Patrik
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Just your ordinary BOFH
http://killertux.org
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Oh this makes me really happy to see this.
At the moment, it would appear that the US Government has been pushing onto US businesses to allow for this and other types of surveillance and snooping. Now businesses will have a clear example of why it is not in their interests to comply so readily. When the international market will no longer trust you or your business model because the US Federal Government is potentially encroaching, corrupting or otherwise tainting their bsuiness image, then there will be lobbying for less government interference with business.
I don't want to see lobbying affect government at all... don't get me wrong. That's where corruption largely begins and lives. But as long as this system is in place, at least now we can see where even those forces can be used against the current trends in government eroding our rights and privacy.
in other news Steve Jobs just announced the latest French Flag theme for the iPhone.
Why would the US want to do this? To engage in "economic war" the opponent needs a vibrant economy. Would the US spy on them to try to determine if they're going to loosen up the 35 hour work week?
I thought RIM was Canadian? http://www.rim.net/
Although I don't doubt that the US government would would snoop on their network too if they could.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Except of course, the current French President is a conservative, and one that comes from a fairly free-enterprise and pro-American background.
Except, of course, the former French President was also a Conservative, and had been in power for the past 15 years. ith disastrous economic results except when his Prime Minister was... a French Socialist.
Except, of course, that the fundamentals of the French economy -- except for unemployment -- are sound, and that the top 40 French companies -- some of which are #1 in the world in their respective fields -- have made so much profit, they have decided to distribute Billions of Euros to their shareholders.
And you, Sir, should focus on basic literacy and common sense, instead of indulging in your know-nothing French socialist bashing.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
There's really only one way.
Build it yourself. Hardware and software. It kind of explains Bull.
Deleted
They just want to get an iPhone and need a reason to expense it.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
it was well known for a long time that france was one of the few hold-outs in terms of letting its CITZENS use pgp encryption tech.
odd that they seem to be doing a 180 and are now CONCERNED (?) with privacy?
I know they now allow pgp encryption for the citizens, but for a long time, hardware vendors that shipped encryption had to 'worry' about how to deal with the french. very bizarre...
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Sorry, but your innuendo falls a little short. It's been pretty visible that the US has mass spy programs against its own citizens (which has long been held less acceptable than against foreign "competition"), and they've done very little to hide the fact that they have a strong interest in collecting and using whatever information they can.
Why do the french have to be up to anything? If I get new deadbolts because I see my neighbour burying bodies in the backyard, it doesn't mean I have any bodies in my yard, it just means I don't want to end fertilizing his...
Geesh. Your blind hatred makes you look silly.
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---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yeah, I guess you wouldn't know anything about blind hatred.
Greetings Fracnophiles,
RIM's push-email servers are in CANADA. Your precious "Stop for a hunk of cheese, bottle of wine, and loaf of stale bread on the way home from work (at 3pm)" text messages to one another go through a server in ONTARIO. Look it up on a map. I believe on the French version of the map (as required by French law, no less) it's called ONTARIO.
You just gave the answer yourself. Do you think the French would trust anything based in Waterloo?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I can see the slogan now... Linux: because you don't have to take our word for it! :)
Seriously, imagine if Windows Update pushed a reconnaissance-program to computers based on IP address before beginning other types of warfare. And conveniently I would imagine it would be difficult to detect the early stages of such an attack as Windows itself would no doubt have configured all the necessary permissions (firewall,...) while not reporting payload-activity. Eventually someone would notice that physical and audited network traffic don't match and then the jig-would-be-up. That's when you begin your land assault!
Shh.
The French were the first to be widely known to commit economic espionage against U.S. firms, I remember. Then IIRC the U.S. decided to get back at them.
In this case the French threw away a nice intel weapon in that they could have coordinated disinformation via their blackberries in an attempt to either disseminate fake information to the U.S. intentionally, or to detect the routes taken by info gleaned from the RIM network much as people make extra email addresses to track spammers.
The problem is, the politicians are only human, and these gadgets are just too darned cute to keep your fingers off 'em.
I wonder why RIM wouldn't be willing to offer the French government their own locally hosted servers.
Ok, so the only bad thing to have happened in recent years, for which BushCo is not at least partially responsible in your opinion, is the disappearance of a lake in Andes. Thanks! :-)
Read up on Echelon... Hardly a Bush-time invention, but one for exactly the kind of espionage, that the French are concerned about.
Read up on the first President of the France's current republic, and his nationalist (often anti-American) stand. Whether the stand is justified or not, it the philosophy strongly influenced French government since then.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
DGSE, the French intelligence services, as part of their official charter engage in industrial and corporate espionage against internal and external targets whether or not those companies are operating in France.
The More You Know.
It was "BAe, the British defence company.