[jope28]

Are you really that worried about d*ick pics? Lol then don't send em. They won't just ask for chats willy nilly lol

Not everyone lives in a country where they don't have to fear "legal" court orders. Your comment is ok for people living in democracies that they trust, but many more people don't.

Just sad that BlackBerry tries to cash-in on the 'Privacy' theme and then it turns out they volunteer out users privacy without even going through the checks and procedure that Canadian law has put in place for foreign governments to make requests through the legal system from companies like BlackBerry.

A little too eager to 'cooperate'. To a cynic, might even give the wrong impression that it could've been done to help with negotiations of government purchases of devices.

 Passport/SQW100-3 .2876 CB10 

[morfinpower]

Via-Blackberry Passport Silver Edition

[filanto]

Are you really that worried about d*ick pics? Lol then don't send em. They won't just ask for chats willy nilly lol

Don't have anything to hide in your car, house or on yourself relax while we go through your life. Oh I think I heard of something like Carnivore and a massive data center just to scan everything

Smart Pill---Rabbit droppings, in Yooperland legend said to increase intelligence.

[rcsgolf]

Pretty simple people! Just don't put anything on BBM, social media, Whatsapp, or any other platform that you don't want someone else to see! Comes down to a privacy issue I know, but be smart about it.

[morfinpower]

"The company also helped authenticate*BBM messages in Major League Baseball's drug investigation that saw New York Yankees star Alex*Rodriguez suspended in 2014."



How do you explain this terrorist criminal activity...^^^


Poor A-Rod, he's probably crying somewhere in his mansion in pile of money.. darn you BlackBerry



Via-Blackberry Passport Silver Edition

[Bla1ze]

We still haven't heard from that Chris Parsons mentioned in the article, lol... ;-D

�   There's a Crack in the Berry right now...   �

Hi.

Oh, wait. Sorry, wrong Chris Parsons.

[Prem WatsApp]

Hi.

Oh, wait. Sorry, wrong Chris Parsons.

Right. Thanks for clarifying, haha... ;-D

�   There's a Crack in the Berry right now...   �

[Elephant_Canyon]

For now, I haven't found a better solution for my use case.

You may want to take a close look at this page.

[Superdupont 2_0]

At one point they had 15 people working in this department.... wonder if they have 15 people working on BB10 these days?

Assuming they can charge LE for these services, I would expect this department still exists.

Okay, there are probably less BBM users these days, but sooner or later everyone writes something suspicious that can be reported to LE.

Your avatar for example shows the member of a criminal organisation, certainly worth a dossier over 12-24 months.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Assuming they can charge LE for these services, I would expect this department still exists.

Okay, there are probably less BBM users these days, but sooner or later everyone writes something suspicious that can be reported to LE.

Your avatar for example shows the member of a criminal organisation, certainly worth a dossier over 12-24 months.

I doubt there are as many request as they once received. Even criminals have moved on.....

It's been clear for YEARS that BBM wasn't secure and that BlackBerry was working with law enforcement. Not all criminals are as out of touch as El Chapo was about the limitations of a non-BES BlackBerry.

A $50 burner phone with WhatsApp meets most of their needs now...

[filanto]

I doubt there are as many request as they once received. Even criminals have moved on.....

It's been clear for YEARS that BBM wasn't secure and that BlackBerry was working with law enforcement. Not all criminals are as out of touch as El Chapo was about the limitations of a non-BES BlackBerry.

A $50 burner phone with WhatsApp meets most of their needs now...

They only had to search for an encrypted transmission in the area and they thought he was and investigate it. How many poor rural Mexicans use encrypted data

Smart Pill---Rabbit droppings, in Yooperland legend said to increase intelligence.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

They only had to search for an encrypted transmission in the area and they thought he was and investigate it. How many poor rural Mexicans use encrypted data

Smart Pill---Rabbit droppings, in Yooperland legend said to increase intelligence.

I don't know... WhatsApp is a pretty popular means of communication for those with a smartphone.

[EchoTango]

I think everyone needs to climb down off the ledge and try to understand the detail here.....

Governments don't need access to Apple or Android devices because they can be either "jailbroken" or "routed" and so no concerns from authorities as they can "hack" them anytime they want. Not so with Blackberry, and so naturally they worry what information is moving through Blackberry's private network inaccessible to law enforcement's prying eyes. If Blackberry was to deny ANY access, those devices would not be permitted to operate in any country given the current threat-rich climate. Blackberry, rather than providing interactive access to security folks, have elected to provide selective legally backed requests for information pertaining to certain individuals while still never allowing access to the network.

This is certainly a reasonable position, if you have a un-hackable network it might end up as a haven for all sorts of bad-actors, which I think is something no one wants or is even asking for. Legally-backed access means there has been some judicial review of the request and that it is reasonable and is in the interests of the society at large. Further, the request is also limited to the required information for the matter at hand and not a state-sponsored fishing exercise.

So, many will say, "what about the countries with poor human rights with oppressive police forces, could this be used as a way to persecute certain groups or persons?" Probably not. For one, these agencies would need to have a constant stream of requests going to Blackberry, which we now know are reviewed by a small group and is clearly not set-up to accommodate large volumes. Also, because of the natural limitations qualified requests have and the focused scope to one person or group, bad actors would realize quickly this is not the high volume solution they want and will look for other ways to persecute their own people, for which they seem to have limitless inventive ideas. Even when bad actors have directly challenged Blackberry for full interactive network access, they have responded by threatening to leave the country, such as the recent case in Pakistan.

One last comment and that has to do with the Corporate clients who have their own BES Servers. They are not a part of this discussion as they create their own security keys, which even Blackberry cannot and does not know. So they are completely safe from any legal or casual surveillance, even if Blackberry was to ever allowed it. In that case the legal request would need to go directly to the suspect company, bypassing Blackberry completely.

So, this is my long-winded explanation of Blackberry's position which is not a headline or sound-byte but a well though out strategy to balance the need for user privacy while not providing a platform for unrestrained criminal activity.

[Bla1ze]

"The company also helped authenticate*BBM messages in Major League Baseball's drug investigation that saw New York Yankees star Alex*Rodriguez suspended in 2014."



How do you explain this terrorist criminal activity...^^^


Poor A-Rod, he's probably crying somewhere in his mansion in pile of money.. darn you BlackBerry



Via-Blackberry Passport Silver Edition

The DEA was involved in that as well as there being court trials. Well within 'legal' jurisdiction.

[Sigewif]

I think everyone needs to climb down off the ledge and try to understand the detail here.....

Governments don't need access to Apple or Android devices because they can be either "jailbroken" or "routed" and so no concerns from authorities as they can "hack" them anytime they want. Not so with Blackberry, and so naturally they worry what information is moving through Blackberry's private network inaccessible to law enforcement's prying eyes. If Blackberry was to deny ANY access, those devices would not be permitted to operate in any country given the current threat-rich climate. Blackberry, rather than providing interactive access to security folks, have elected to provide selective legally backed requests for information pertaining to certain individuals while still never allowing access to the network.

This is certainly a reasonable position, if you have a un-hackable network it might end up as a haven for all sorts of bad-actors, which I think is something no one wants or is even asking for. Legally-backed access means there has been some judicial review of the request and that it is reasonable and is in the interests of the society at large. Further, the request is also limited to the required information for the matter at hand and not a state-sponsored fishing exercise.

So, many will say, "what about the countries with poor human rights with oppressive police forces, could this be used as a way to persecute certain groups or persons?" Probably not. For one, these agencies would need to have a constant stream of requests going to Blackberry, which we now know are reviewed by a small group and is clearly not set-up to accommodate large volumes. Also, because of the natural limitations qualified requests have and the focused scope to one person or group, bad actors would realize quickly this is not the high volume solution they want and will look for other ways to persecute their own people, for which they seem to have limitless inventive ideas. Even when bad actors have directly challenged Blackberry for full interactive network access, they have responded by threatening to leave the country, such as the recent case in Pakistan.

One last comment and that has to do with the Corporate clients who have their own BES Servers. They are not a part of this discussion as they create their own security keys, which even Blackberry cannot and does not know. So they are completely safe from any legal or casual surveillance, even if Blackberry was to ever allowed it. In that case the legal request would need to go directly to the suspect company, bypassing Blackberry completely.

So, this is my long-winded explanation of Blackberry's position which is not a headline or sound-byte but a well though out strategy to balance the need for user privacy while not providing a platform for unrestrained criminal activity.

Thank you for your articulate post.
Doesn't the adverb embellishment in the first sentence of the article the OP quoted, and the smokescreen of unidentified, unauthorized sources contain certain elements that sound, well, just a little, off, a little dubious? Just asking.
Information can be angled to misconstrue facts in order to give a totally different first impression. It doesn't matter whether the information is accurate and precise, as long as it can be click-bate for a news article, or perhaps be done with an agenda to harm a competitor. Interesting that this article, which has no verified (named) sources, is missing information about the BES servers, BB's stance in the issue with Pakistan, etc. Plus the article showed up just around the time of BlackBerry announcing their updates to their enterprise portfolio and the upcoming security conference. It gave only part of the picture. Also, there is already a statement from BlackBerry about these matters so the rest is old news.

[sorinv]

This still does not make him a Chinese national. He is British national and a naturalized US citizen.

I don't think this is relevant or important, but isn't someone born and educated in Hong Khong also a Chinese citizen now, after the handover?
Isn't that how China regards it?

[sorinv]

I think everyone needs to climb down off the ledge and try to understand the detail here.....


One last comment and that has to do with the Corporate clients who have their own BES Servers. They are not a part of this discussion as they create their own security keys, which even Blackberry cannot and does not know. So they are completely safe from any legal or casual surveillance, even if Blackberry was to ever allowed it. In that case the legal request would need to go directly to the suspect company, bypassing Blackberry completely.

What proof do we have that BES is secure other than BlackBerry's (Chen's) word, who has lost all his credibility?
What if the US government wants to find out some French or German company's secrets that competes, say with Tesla, or Google's driverless cars business or Boeing ?

[Tony Zhuang]

What if the US government wants to find out some French or German company's secrets that competes, say with Tesla, or Google's driverless cars business or Boeing ?

I don't see your point. Which one of those requests reported by the CBC article do you not agree with? To me, they all sound like reasonable request and BlackBerry is helping the public interest. You can imagine the danger to public safety if there is absolutely no access to the BBM messages. You'd effectively create a safe channel of communications for potential criminals. Is that what we want? What have we become to have so little faith in government nowadays?

[sorinv]

I don't see your point. Which one of those requests reported by the CBC article do you not agree with? To me, they all sound like reasonable request and BlackBerry is helping the public interest. You can imagine the danger to public safety if there is absolutely no access to the BBM messages. You'd effectively create a safe channel of communications for potential criminals. Is that what we want? What have we become to have so little faith in government nowadays?

1) The CBC report mentioned Blackberry handing over Dilma Rouseff's conversations. She was(still is) the president of Brazil at that time. Why would BlackBerry get involved in Brazilian politics? How do they know which side of the political fight is right and or honest and not corrupt?

2) Blackberry's sp�t with Pakistan last year was about BES licenses, not regular BBM. Yet they came to an agreement. This suggests, especially based on the most recent revelations, that BlackBerry can intercept BES messages and deliver them to the authorities, even in a country like Pakistan.

By his actions and public statements, Chen has managed to kill not only BB10 and hardware, but also any semblance of privacy or security that the BlackBerry name used to represent.
No company and no consumer would want a BlackBerry device or even a BlackBerry software license now.
He is also killing the software business if nobody trusts BlackBerry to keep their information secret.

[sorinv]

You may want to take a close look at this page.

No thanks! I bought my first ever Mac last summer. I don't trust it and it's already dead in the repair shop. With MacOs, you don't even know for sure where your files are and how apple accesses your data. I don't even have an apple account and still I don't dare bank or put any confidential material on my Mac.

[vladi]

You are all forgetting that Blackberry's biggest customers, or only customers are governments. Reason why they are what they are is Canadian government. They are like the best buds and for them to say NO to them would be illogical.

On contrary I'm still waiting for any country to proclaim data mining a crime without service being properly labeled as Private Data Collection for Sharing Purposes. This would look something like this: Google Maps will not be considered a map service but private data collection and tracking service with right to share the collected information which in return gives their customers a benefit of using and interacting with detailed map data and navigation.
This would raise the awareness how serious data mining truly is.

[Tsepz_GP]

"I don't want to use Google / third party XXX on Android, I want BlackBerry to make their own because I trust them" seems quite silly now...

Its always been silly. I truly find it hilarious that people think e.g. Google is worse than others, when its clear they are all the same. Where people think companies like Blue Kai get their 'big data' from??? Lol.

[FR33MAN]

You have companies under prism in US (government agency with free access) or a Canadian company that responds to court request. I'm cool with that.

Posted via CB10

[LazyEvul]

You have companies under prism in US (government agency with free access) or a Canadian company that responds to court request. I'm cool with that.

Posted via CB10

PRISM doesn't provide "free access," the requesting agency has to provide a selector (i.e. an email address), and they will receive anything sent to or from that selector. And it always required a "court request", or more specifically, a Section 702 directive that compels the provider to hand over data. The court approving these directives and setting the rules for PRISM requests runs in secret, hence why we never heard about it before Snowden.

Given that BlackBerry doesn't even release a transparency report, I doubt they have any qualms about cooperating with secret courts in a similar fashion. Hell, they can't even be bothered to take advantage of the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to run the requests past Canadian courts, which I still find shocking and absurd. Apple, Microsoft and Google have all challenged their own government in court on privacy issues, but BlackBerry won't even make sure requests meet the standards of Canadian law.

[app_Developer]

You can imagine the danger to public safety if there is absolutely no access to the BBM messages. You'd effectively create a safe channel of communications for potential criminals. Is that what we want? What have we become to have so little faith in government nowadays?

So what about BBM Protected? Are you saying BB should stop selling that?

Or should they turn off end to end encryption for BES accounts? Do you consider those to be public safety risks?