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BlackBerry CEO 'Disturbed' By Apple's Hard Line On Encryption (theinquirer.net)
An anonymous reader writes: BlackBerry CEO John Chen said he is "disturbed" by Apple's tough approach to encryption and user privacy, warning that the firm's attitude is harmful to society. Earlier this year, Chen said in response to Apple resisting the government's demands to unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters: "We are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good." During BlackBerry's Security Summit in New York this week, Chen made several more comments about Apple's stance on encryption. "One of our competitors, we call it 'the other fruit company,' has an attitude that it doesn't matter how much it might hurt society, they're not going to help," he said. "I found that disturbing as a citizen. I think BlackBerry, like any company, should have a basic civil responsibility. If the world is in danger, we should be able to help out." He did say there was a lot of "nonsense" being reported about BlackBerry and its approach to how it handles user information. "Of course, there need to be clear guidelines. The guidelines we've adopted require legal assets. A subpoena for certain data. But if you have the data, you should give it to them," he said. "There's some complete nonsense about what we can and can't do. People are mad at us that we let the government have the data. It's absolute garbage. We can't do that." Chen also warned that mandatory back doors aren't a good idea either, hinting at the impending Investigatory Powers Bill. "There's proposed legislation in the U.S., and I'm sure it will come to the EU, that every vendor needs to provide some form of a back door. That is not going to fly at all. It just isn't," he said.
Glad their insecure piece of shit platform is nearly dead
"We are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good."
I guess Mr. Chen and Mr. Cook have very different ideas of what the greater good is.
Blackberry's CEO is just positioning itself as the cocksucker for governments.
Anything for some more contracts, I guess. They need whatever they can get.
John Chen is a bit like gun prohibitionists. It doesn't matter if government requires manufacturers to install back doors. Eventually someone will develop encryption software without a back door - and government will still not have a key.
Outlawing guns or encryption guarantees that only outlaws will possess those things.
Apple is smart enough to realize this. They understand that throwing their users under the bus now will not make us safer later.
I wish they could have gotten the CEO of Pan Am, Zenith, or RCA to speak up on the subject.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I'm disturbed by BlackBerry's stance on the situation.
Under no circumstances should backdoors be allowed.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Blackberry's CEO is just positioning itself as the cocksucker for governments.
Anything for some more contracts, I guess. They need whatever they can get.
A bit ironic, as part of the reason for Blackberry's decline is that businesses can't trust they won't hand over their secure communications to whatever entity asks for it.
I'm disturbed by his "non-tough" approach. I hope CTOs reading this draw the right conclusions.
And they use to have such a good rep... oh well, someone flush the toilet.
Apple did what they should do for encryption. They refused to release a signed version of their firmware that would allow any phone with that firmware to be brute force cracked. Even if they took the actual phone into their possession and loaded the special firmware themselves only on that phone it would mean tens of thousands of requests from law enforcement and courts all over the world. They couldn't say no to any of them. A logistical nightmare that doesn't make Apple any money; break even at best but with lots of negative press.
It's a no win situation. And you can be sure that further into the future they will endeavor to make it impossible for even them to crack their own phones no matter what firmware the device uses.
Didn't you hear? The USA just bought a ton of apple phones for military special forces.
BB apparently depends on government business for a large fraction of its' income. This is just "dancing to the piper's tune."
Chen appears to be siding with his major "customer," to forego his failure at making a product that non-governmental customers want to buy. He is also apparently wholly ignorant of constitutional rights to privacy in the U.S., as outlined by Alan Westin's seminal and masterful "Privacy and Freedom" (1967).
Dear Mr. Chen: There is no such thing as encryption with a back door. That's the guideline moron.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Seriously. It's already known that your company basically already sold its own encryption keys, and thus isn't a trustworthy platform anymore.
Stop trying to curry favor. Your company crashed. You're essentially obsolete. Your heyday ain't coming back.
So please, all you're doing is shaming yourself further, to make a buck.
What's next? Prostituting your own children for money?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Every country will eventually NEED to get access to that data. It's far more likely to be used to squash liberty than to solve the cases for 3 or 4 bad guys. If you need to hack a phone to catch someone, you are fishing. The dumb criminals of course will leave the evidence there -- but also everywhere else. The terrorist cell however, will use a burner phone or a damn pigeon.
America will not get more secure by more spying, but by stronger communities and job opportunities. Every one of these attacks is coming from a loner.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
"I guess I won't be using this Blackberry any more." - Everyone in 2008
economically. Not at his income level. There's little doubt he's got a healthy golden parachute. Being afraid for things like surveillance generally requires quite a bit of economic insecurity. You have to believe the world can and will turn on you at some point, which is an odd thought to have if you've spent all or most of your adult life without worrying about money. It's an entirely different outlook on life you'd only get from a member of the ruling class. The 20th century equivalent to "Let them eat cake".
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this is like a fly telling you not to flush your shit as its for the greater good of fly society to leave the turd in the bowl.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
1) BB just died with Mr. Chen's comments.
2) Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that Apple has integrity*. Not a huge fanboi, it pains me terribly to say that.
*on the matter of encryption/privacy.
That ruins the Blackberry brand for me...
Yup. I thought exactly the same thing-- blackberry has just gone from a company I didn't give a shit about to an enemy of decent society. I will be sure to discourage people from using it and mock it when I can.
Let's make sure everyone knows that the BlackBerry brand has taken the side of poor security by design and a stated deference to the surveillance state.
Agreed!
It's obviously political grandstanding based on this quote alone: "We are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good."
Apple has stated it puts all users ("greater good") at risk to find or create a back-door. Even if the BlackBerry CEO disagrees with the weight of one risk against the other (potentially solving crimes now versus creating more in the future), he should give Apple the benefit of the doubt in terms of internal motivation, and simply say, "I disagree with Apple's weighing of probabilities" rather than question Apple's motives.
It's unprofessional to publicly question motives unless you have solid evidence of bias. Disagreement about risk probability estimates does not even come close to that level.
If by chance Apple replies and says BlackBerry is just saying that to get gov't contracts, they'd be committing the same sin of guessing motivations instead of focusing the facts of differing professional assessments.
Hanlon's Razor.
Everybody probably has some degree internal biases, some they are aware of and some not. Human nature. Pointing that out doesn't tell anybody anything new, and is rude: it generates heat, not light.
Table-ized A.I.
But even governments are abandoning Blackberry devices, and since he's just turning Blackberry into an Android maker, he's lost most of what differentiated BB from everyone else. At this point, it looks like a guy with a horse drawn carriage who he's strapped a gas engine to shaking his fists at the sports cars.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
To be fair to Chen, Blackberry was already a dead man walking. While it still had significant cash in the bank, its revenue had already collapsed, and he was supposed to be this big white knight who could save the company. It was an impossible task, but what did BB have to lose? But Chen has spouted a lot of crap of late, which leads me to believe he's just grasping at straws at this point.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Locked down" devices are hacked to allow unauthorized software all the time. But for argument's sake - lets assume a hardware provider does succeed in making unhackable hardware.
A law prohibiting internet connectivity would require that criminals obey the law - let me give away the ending to that story: Criminals will break the law.
Forcing such a prohibition via technical means would require re-engineering the entire internet - all the way down the OSI stack to the physical layer. Re-engineering internet, being the global network of networks that it is, would require the cooperation of every single government and every single network operator on the planet.
That is an unlikely set of circumstances for sure.
Show them you're belly. How anyone could believe that is beyond me. I bet if someone doxed his ass he would be outraged and scream about his privacy.
The "greater good" is for people to disclose their own privacy.
These backbone providers transit data across their networks to other networks. It is not possible for them to know the security status of the devices sending or receiving that data.
To enable such detection, the entire structure of the internet would need to be redesigned to support that detection.
Could a backbone provider simply block encrypted data that government can't decrypt? Possibly, but that requires that the internet provider decrypt that data in real time and block any other encrypted data.
The biggest problem with all of these strategies is that you can simply nest your encrypted data inside a government approved data packet. You can decrypt the outer container only to find the contents are still encrypted and beyond your reach.
Outlawing encryption entirely is like asking math to become undiscovered. It simply isn't possible to control.
I know that many people claim that companies must everything they can to maximize shareholder value, but this is a clear example of the opposite. A couple of years ago, perhaps more, Blackberry should have shut down and distributed its cash to its shareholders. Instead, a steady bleeding of cash means that shareholders are losing their investment.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I am disturbed by Blackberry's hard line stance, and consider it harmful to society.
"I think BlackBerry, like any company, should have a basic civil responsibility. If the world is in danger, we should be able to help out." ...
Chen also warned that mandatory back doors aren't a good idea either.
I'd like to hear Chen's idea of how he can accomplish access to encrypted data without the user's consent while not having a back door.
I suppose he doesn't count the vendor having the user's key and using it without permission as "unauthorized access".
If the world is in danger, we should be able to help out.
That's a big 'if'. Terrorism doesn't kill anybody, statistically speaking (and that's not to say I don't feel sad for all the statistical anomalies in Nice, etc, but let's keep it in perspective), so it should not be something to be afraid of. Governments around the world are using it as a control measure over the population. That's what they always do. Encryption thwarts that control in a minor way, that's why they're scared of it.
I think this was Blackberry's "Ratner Moment". Bye bye blackberry way.....
My long time complaint has been that Blackberry was very abusive and disregarded the desires of its users. They would allow telcos to molest their products to maintain a "good" relationship with the telcos. They would allow IT departments to molest their products to maintain a "good" relationship with the IT departments, and now they seem to want the jackbooted thugs who run our secret police to molest their products, but for what?
They let other people turn their phones into turds an the market spoke.
Now he is whining because Apple won't turn their phones into turds on the behest of some bunch of assholes.
The telcos put blackberries onto the bottom shelf the second the iPhone came along, the IT departments switched to everything else, and the jackbooted thugs will probably treat BB with the same respect. This makes me smile.
For those who aren't Canadian, BB epitomizes everything that the rest of Canada hates about central Canada (where RIM is located). This unrelenting bowing to authority. This treating of the people as peasants who don't know what is best for themselves. A pseudo intellectual belief that the rest of the world will somehow come around to their delusions and make it their reality.
If any warrant can be trumped up, the logical end point is that you don't believe in warrants to begin with.
No, absolutely not. The logical endpoint is that a warrant is a tool that can be used for either good or evil. All tools should be evaluated on a case by case basis. If your logic was true, it would mean nobody could own a screwdriver or a frying pan. Those tools have been used as a murder devices, so must always be a murder device.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
How is this company even relevant anymore....
Oh, wait, yeah...Blackberry. I remember them. They were a big deal about 15 years ago I think.
Man, whatever happened to them? They just fell off the face of the Earth and into irrelevance with their zeroish market share. The fact that they bend over and spread their cheeks any time any law enforcement or government agency (from anywhere in the world) asks them to do so is actually a small part of the reason that they failed so miserably.
I'm an Apple hater from way back, but the fact that they're willing to go to war with the FBI (and not just win, but humiliate them in the process) is something that I think is fucking fantastic.
And that is just it: Sucking up to the authorities in a police-state like the US is _not_ for the greater good. Apple has it right this time, what is demanded of them goes way too far.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
But even governments are abandoning Blackberry devices, and since he's just turning Blackberry into an Android maker, he's lost most of what differentiated BB from everyone else.
Well, they've still got their keyboards. It didn't keep them market leader like they hoped, but since pretty much nobody else has them any more, it could keep them afloat.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
No mommy, don't do it again
Don't do it again
I'll be a good boy
I'll be a good boy, I promise
No mommy don't hit me
Why did you have to hit me like that, mommy?
Don't do it, you're hurting me
Why did you have to be such a bitch
Why don't you,
Why don't you just fuck off and die
Why can't you just fuck off and die
Why can't you just leave here and die
Never stick your hand in my face again bitch
FUCK YOU
I don't need this shit
You stupid sadistic abusive fucking whore
How would you like to see how it feels mommy
Here it comes, get ready to die
We alienated our customer base by handing out their privacy and now they should damn well, too!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Such leftist extremism like not bending over to the government?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If it were truly for the greater good, perhaps they wouldn't be risking their reputations. The thing is, the authorities have proven themselves to be untrustworthy. They define "bad guys" as not only those who wish to harm people, but also those they deem to be threats to the System or the status quo. So while we can all agree that we want to know what's on the phone of a mass murderer, we should be more circumspect about the data belonging to Occupy protesters or the ACLU. Unfortunately, the authorities generally are not. Saying that helping them in all cases, or as a matter of policy, is a matter of the greater good is not a cut and dry as he seems to think.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
No... you obviously do not understand socialism. What political ideology is responsible for the death and enslavement of over 160,000,000 people (conservatively)? Socialism. Socialism, according to the leaders of it, always ends in communism. Hitler. Mao. Stalin. Go read an actual book for some real information. Stop getting your ideas from television.
I'm wondering what books you've been reading.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Who on their right mind will use their products now?
Those all turned into fascist dictatorships. True communism and socialism are peaceful and non-deadly. It's the humans that fuck it up in its' own name.
It's OUR data, not yours, and CERTAINLY not the Government's.
RIM changed their name to Blackberry several years ago.
one of BlackBerry's selling points was that they were secure end to end and even they could not see messages being transferred through their NOC by enterprise customers who had their own keys installed on BES?
Apple's stand on encryption is the correct one. You can't backdoor encryption and have only the "good guys" have access.
Anyone who believes that is a realistic possibility is idiotic.
One thing to keep in mind in line with Chen's comments is that Canada has some of the best privacy legislation in the world. Sure it has issues, and has been challenged politically in recent years under the guise of terrorism and protecting children, but in the end it survives and is pretty powerful. So from his perspective in Canada his point of view is pretty consistent and has merit. However is the US, it is a bit of a different story. In much of the world it is even more so. India is one example people will cite. However BB has made a few stands on ethics such as Pakistan where the proposed governments use wasn't aligned with what BB thought was reasonable, so they suspended service to that country (they do not do business there).
So anyway take what he says with a bit of grain of salt considering where he is coming from. I think what Chen is failing to comprehend is there there are citizens out there that are reasonable people that live in places where privacy laws are not as strong as some might like, and for those people there is a demand for "artificially" imposed privacy by technology rather than legislation which they lack the power to seemingly implement. Apple (particularly after the whole Snowden thing) I think sees this and is trying to capitalize on it. How long they can get away with it is the key point. The funny (or depressing) part is, the only reason they can probably get away with it is the general popularity of their devices. Where should they say "fine, we're not changing our phones, we just won't sell there any more" people would get very upset and it would quickly become political. Much more so however than a bunch of people actually getting together that disagree with the privacy laws in a particular country and actually doing something about it. In this way Apple is playing a bit of chicken with governments on the issue. I don't for a minute thing that Apple would do it, but I don't think political leaders are willing to take that chance which is as I mentioned a bit crazy.
It hasn't even given them enough sales to break even. The number of people looking for keyboards on phones is so small it's hard to call it even a niche.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Is this guy on Apple's payroll or something? To my ears, he might as well be begging me not to buy BlackBerry. (Do they even sell phones anymore?)
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Businesses do nhot make decisions the same way that consumers do. That's why they have IT departments. And those IT departments would have heard about Blackberry's willingness to give them up without a fight.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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