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BlackBerry CEO Promises To Try To Break Customers' Encryption If the US Government Asks Him To (techdirt.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Techdirt that claims the company has "chosen to proclaim its willingness to hack into its own customers' devices if the government asks." From the report: From a Forbes article: "[CEO John] Chen, speaking at a press Q&A during the BlackBerry Security Summit in London on Tuesday, claimed that it wasn't so simple for BlackBerry to crack its own protections. 'Only when the government gives us a court order we will start tracking it. Then the question is: how good is the encryption? 'Today's encryption has got to the point where it's rather difficult, even for ourselves, to break it, to break our own encryption... it's not an easily breakable thing. We will only attempt to do that if we have the right court order. The fact that we will honor the court order doesn't imply we could actually get it done.'"
Oddly, this came coupled with Chen's assertions its user protections were better than Apple's and its version of the Android operating system more secure than the one offered by competitors. This proactive hacking offer may be pointed to in the future by DOJ and FBI officials as evidence Apple, et al aren't doing nearly enough to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement. Of course, Chen's willingness to try doesn't guarantee the company will be able to decrypt communications of certain users. Blackberry may be opening up to law enforcement but it won't be sharing anything more with its remaining users. From the Forbes article: "Chen also said there were no plans for a transparency report that would reveal more about the company's work with government. 'No one has really asked us for it. We don't really have a policy on whether we will do it or not. Just like every major technology company that deals with telecoms, we obviously have quite a number of requests around the world.'"
Oddly, this came coupled with Chen's assertions its user protections were better than Apple's and its version of the Android operating system more secure than the one offered by competitors. This proactive hacking offer may be pointed to in the future by DOJ and FBI officials as evidence Apple, et al aren't doing nearly enough to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement. Of course, Chen's willingness to try doesn't guarantee the company will be able to decrypt communications of certain users. Blackberry may be opening up to law enforcement but it won't be sharing anything more with its remaining users. From the Forbes article: "Chen also said there were no plans for a transparency report that would reveal more about the company's work with government. 'No one has really asked us for it. We don't really have a policy on whether we will do it or not. Just like every major technology company that deals with telecoms, we obviously have quite a number of requests around the world.'"
Isn't there a law or code of some sort that says not to murder, harm, sue, or otherwise ruin a paying customer?
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
I'm sure all eight remaining BB customers are totally freaked out. Best switch to Windows Phone to keep their niche player cred.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Not that I was going to seriously consider buying a Blackberry product before, but I can't think of any possibly way this would make me want to change my mind.
Is he just saying stupid shit like this so he can get fired and collect his golden parachute?
Seriously.
They're so customer unfriendly it's not even funny.
"Yeah. We know you paid a lot of money for our products. But fuck you! Because we have an "in" with the gub-mint!"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I wasn't aware Blackberry is even relevant anymore. Now I have even more reason to stay away ... as if there weren't enough reasons anywway.
... says 2008 me.
#DeleteChrome
If he was asked to put in a backdoor "by court order", would he....
Governments already require telcos to implement backdoors under the guise of "Lawful Interception": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I developed for an ISP platform of "a major provider" in Europe a while back, and guess what . . . ?
Yes, it was conform in providing this LI service to the folks, um, "entitled" to it. It was even implemented so that the platform operators could not see who was being tapped. This was because the spooks feared that "criminals" would smuggle in their own folks to work as operators, who could then tip off the criminals when the spooks were tapping them.
The spooks are supposed to have the proper judicial approvals . . . but it's like a dubious dance club catering to underage drinkers . . . no one is checking IDs at the door.
Someone should directly ask Blackberry how they assist "lawful" organization trace and tap communications on their systems.
Whoops! That pesky little National Security Letter Gag Order, again . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
That I have never heard of Blackberry / RIM being in the news for resisting or challenging a government order to reveal customer data speaks a great deal to me.
At least I have some public signalling by Apple that they think about whether they should or not. Maybe BB thinks about this as well, but I don't hear about it.
I've been repeating this for quite a while now, but I dunno for what reason, people have apparently forgotten all about the case involving the Canadian Mounted Police, a master decryption key for all non-enterprise accounts, and extremely crappy response from your same very own John Chen who was also the CEO back at the time.
Let me refresh people's memories:
https://www.theverge.com/2016/...
https://news.vice.com/article/...
http://blogs.blackberry.com/20...
https://www.computerworld.com/...
If anyone was stupid enough to fall into the obvious and very false statement that the new Blackberry had better costumer protection in place in comparison to Apple or other Android brands, it's on you for not doing very basic research.
It's like getting surprized with a new round of scandals of Lenovo laptops having malware pre-loaded on their bios. There have been enough cases to know what the position of the company is. If you are still throwing your money at them, you are just reinforcing the behavior and proving to them that it's acceptable.
John Chen has said nothing there that he didn't already say in the past. While he is the CEO of the company, such behavior is to be expected. Anyone who cares about their own personal privacy and about having proper standards on costumer protection should've already let go of the brand by now.
Aside from petty criminals, I would be shocked that any decent terrorist was even bothering to rely on any kind of third-party to provide their encryption anyway. I mean, that's just stupid.
Use ANY communications medium you like. The same metadata would be present on just about all of them. And encrypt the message before you send it. It's not hard.
Then you know that only the guy with the key can decrypt it and it doesn't matter what Blackberry/WhatsApp/Facebook etc. record - they only get the same metadata anyway. And, also, you could send the message by carrier pigeon if you were that paranoid. It would barely matter.
What we're catching with such stupidity are not the master criminals, but the idiots. The idiots are easy to spot anyway, precisely because they give the game away from the metadata. While the master criminals aren't hindered in the slightest. Meanwhile, all our privacy is stripped away on the inference that we're somehow stopping the master criminals by doing so.
I object to the stupidity, dumbing down, and taking me for an idiot - much more than I object to someone claiming to help the government decrypt if ordered to do so.