[7scarabs]

Here's a good summary of the issue from Wikipedia:

"Government regulation

Some countries have expressed reservations about the BlackBerry's encryption & decryption and the fact that data is routed through Research In Motion's servers, which are outside the legal jurisdictions of those countries. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were reported to consider the BlackBerry as a "security threat" for this reason, with the former having earlier been reported as trying to get users to install an "update" on their BlackBerry devices, ostensibly for performance enhancement, but which turned out to be spyware that allowed call and email monitoring.

On August 1, 2010 Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRA) of The United Arab Emirates officially announced the suspension of BlackBerry Messenger, Blackberry Email, and Blackberry Web browsing services in the country as of October 11, 2010. This measure was taken due to failed attempts to bring the service and have it hosted locally as per the UAE Telecommunication regulations.

Other countries threatening to ban the use of the BlackBerry Messenger include Algeria, Indonesia and India.

Saudi Arabia had threatened to ban the service, however it was able to reach an agreement with RIM to set up a server for the service inside the Kingdom."

[phonejunky]

+5 Good find.