Blackberry Services To Be Banned In UAE

Comes as no surprise that the UAE government has showcased its concern for security over mobile connections by announcing to cease Blackberry services if Research in Motion failed to comply with the rules of the state.

RIM’s Blackberry smartphones use a unique encryption technology which transfer the data sent from the mobile directly to the international Blackberry services without letting even the national security servers monitor it.

UAE, just like a few other nations, has foreseen this as a threat to national security and will ban Blackberry services in UAE including email, internet and IM over Blackberry handsets. Not only UAE, other nations around the globe, including Saudi Arabia and India among others have express their dislike for the kind of encryption blackberry servers use to encrypt the data.

Following UAE, the government of Saudi Arabia has also announced that it will prevent the use of Blackberry to Blackberry IM i.e., the use of Blackberry messenger and email if RIM failed to meet the demands at hand.

“UAE took a bolder step than Saudi Arabia whereas Saudi Arabia is only banning one, the Messenger,” said Abdulrahman Mazi. “I hope this is only a kind of pressure on RIM to take steps to provide information when needed.”

Wall Street Journal quoted a person familiar with the matter as saying “If the U.A.E. government need this information, for criminal cases, they are unable to access it because the culprits used BlackBerry messenger service… There’stons of information going in and out of the country which is now unmonitored.”

According to the sources, the ban, due to be effective starting 11th September is a consequence of “failure of ongoing attempts, dating back to 2007”, where RIM is operating “beyond the enforcement” of current telecommunications regulations in the country.

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