Simon Says – Musings of a Technology CTO

Following on from a failed state-wide “hack” of the Blackberry system, where the state-controlled telco etisalat tried to distribute a “performance enhancing patch” to Blackberry users (which turned out to be a state-controlled back door program), The United Arab Emirates is threatening to block e-mail sending and IM delivery on Blackberries, and Saudi Arabia is threatening to block Blackberry-to-Blackberry IM.

According to BBC News:

Both nations are unhappy that they are unable to monitor such communications via the handsets. This is because the Blackberry handsets automatically send the encrypted data to computer servers outside the two countries.

Read more…