Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

BlackBerry Exits Pakistan Amid User Privacy Concerns (blackberry.com)

Posted by timothy on from the where-are-you-and-for-how-long? dept.

An anonymous reader writes: BlackBerry has announced that it will pull its operations in Pakistan from today, quoting a recent government notice which read that the company would not be permitted to continue its services in the country after December for 'security reasons.' In a blog post released by BlackBerry today, chief operating officer Marty Beard confirmed the decision: 'The truth is that the Pakistani government wanted the ability to monitor all BlackBerry Enterprise Service traffic in the country, including every BES e-mail and BES BBM message.' He added: 'BlackBerry will not comply with that sort of directive.'

3 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Hooray by messymerry · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hooray for Blackberry. I wish more corporations had a even tiny little smidgen of ethics. Oh, and stop calling me an effing "consumer"!!! Corporations work for the banks nowadays. That is their "customer".

    --
    Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
  2. Re:Security by MagickalMyst · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "As opposed to what?"

    As opposed to other cellphones.

    "It sure as heck did go down for awhile on 9/11."

    Blackberry was the only communications lifeline for many on 9/11. It was reported in the NYT.

    It has even been suggested that radio jamming technology may have been employed on 9/11, as several important communication systems 'just happened' to go down that day:

    - New York cell phones (although this could possibly be caused by a system overload)
    - WTC’s internal communication system (just happened to be down that day)
    - Port Authority's transmission repeater on top of WTC5 (just happened to be down that day)

    Regardless of these communications failures, Blackberry still allowed people to communicate on 9/11.

    Then we moved into the age of surveillance, and the world of the Spyphone - largely justified by those attacks. How ironic.

    --
    Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
  3. Re:Security by Aqualung812 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That had nothing to do with security.

    It was simply that Blackberry was using BBM and people were sending data-based text messages to each other.

    Everyone else was using classic flip-phones and trying to call each other, and the cell networks were overloaded.

    Getting a few bytes of text that would auto-retry in the background was reliable. Getting an open voice slot on a cell tower was not.

    --
    Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.