We have ongoing litigation between a previous employee and the company, where the employee states much of what he is saying was over chat with another employee, and he can prove it if the chat history was available.
We have moved off BlackBerry about 1.5 years ago, but I was wondering if, in the case of legal issues, BlackBerry had a backup copy of the chats.
If anyone can shed some light, it would be appreciated.
Thank you.
Marv.
Nope. Once they have been deleted, they are gone.
Period.
Hi Carl,
So, don't the chats themselves pass through the BB servers? Do you not think BB keeps a copy of the chats?
I can't imagine the Police have no ability to look back and get chat history in the case of major illegal situations.
BlackBerry - BlackBerry.com Privacy Policy from Research In Motion (RIM) - Canada
5. BlackBerry's processing of your personal information
a) Retention
BlackBerry retains personal information as long as necessary for the fulfillment of BlackBerry's identified purposes or as otherwise necessary to comply with applicable laws. When personal information is no longer necessary or relevant for BlackBerry's identified purposes, or required by applicable laws, BlackBerry will take steps to have it deleted, destroyed, erased, aggregated or made anonymous. Consistent with good business practice, BlackBerry continues to evolve our controls, schedules and practices for information and records retention and destruction which apply to your personal information.
Are you referring to BBM chats?
If so, even if they did keep them, you'd have to have a subpoena written by the Queen of England. Other nations have taken months to wrestle information from BlackBerry servers under threat of expulsion.
I think it's way above the pay grade of the local law enforcement.
Z30STA100-5/10.3.2.2339
BlackBerry does have the chat's sent through their servers of course and they are on the servers but for only so long. 1.5 years is a pretty long time
You can contact BlackBerry and ask them...
I assume you are talking about "chats" that are made using BBM and not just regular text messages.
But I don't know of any reason that BlackBerry would be legally required to maintain a database of messages for years. Maybe 90 days at best, but their "suppose" to be encrypted anyway...
Your problem is why BlackBerry created their BBM Protected version so that it works with the logging and auditing capabilities available through BlackBerry Auditing and Archiving Service (BAAS), allowing you to meet regulatory and compliance requirements. But that is a new feature that only some regulated industries will even use - it doesn't come standard.
Thanks everyone for posting.
I see the retention policy, but I don't see an explicit statement of what constitutes either that the data is not 'needed' any longer, or any set amount of time in which the data gets removed. 1.5 years is long, I agree, but in many industries data retention is 7, 10 or even 50 years.
Regarding getting a subpoena or any legal documentation, that should not be an issue. The part about the Queen of England though....maybe a bit tougher. I hear she likes tea and crumpets.
I will have to contact BlackBerry directly about this, no doubt, but getting a hold of someone there is extremely difficult since it seems they moved all support to either twitter or the blackberry forums. If anyone has a contact number or email for this kind of a question, please toss it my way.
Again though, thanks for the responses all.
-Marv
The BBM chats are not stored on the server. The only time a message sits there is while waiting to be delivered. If not delivered within 30 days, it is deleted.
Posted via CB10
I wouldn't take it lightly. The BlackBerry TOS only covers the relationship between BlackBerry and its customer - it says nothing about the law itself. As far as I know, the release of encrypted IM to the authorities in Canada has never been tested in court. Texts, yes. Email, yes.
Z30STA100-5/10.3.2.2339
With a BES server your company can set up retention as required
I doubt that BlackBerry would waste ressources to retain messages passing through BBM.
If they did, there wouldn't be a use for the "save history" feature on BBM!
Posted via CB10
BlackBerry has to work under any local law and work with the intelligence service.
Upon lawfull requests, they will deliver plain text messages if possible.
BBM uses a default encryption key per default, so it's quite easy.
In some countries BlackBerry was struggling with local governments for a while, but had to "comply" because the carriers was instructed to prevent BlackBerry services from working, if an agreement wasn't made (India/Pakistan as far as I remember).
I have no information about whether BlackBerry stores BBM messages or not. If they are required to do so by law, they have to.
Do you have the physical device or any back ups? This is probably your best chance.
Posted via CB10
No they have provide authorities with BBM access....
Police accessed BlackBerry messages to thwart planned riots | UK news | The Guardian
Blackberry messages helped police crack Montreal Mafia ring | Toronto Star
That is only one case in Canada... that made the news. Who knows how many times it didn't make the news.
But these seemed to be cases of interception of live BBM consumer messages and not the recovery of archived messages.
Although the article says that:
"Investigators would not say if they had the help of the Waterloo, Ont.-based firm in carrying out their probe."
Serious criminals will just switch to solutions like BBM-Protected now I suppose. Then no one, including BlackBerry, can recover messages.
Z30STA100-5/10.3.2.2339
looks like they do if the scandal is big enough....check this in Brazil
BlackBerry Messenger helps uncover a Brazilian corruption scandal
As Dunt Dunt Dunt mentioned, unless the messages are still on the BES, or were archived using a service like BAAS, there is no way to recover them. I don't think BlackBerry is keeping a copy of the MILLIONS of messages sent through BBM, etc.