Blocking Behind BlackBerry

Plan for various countries in the Middle East and Asia to block BlackBerry service were increasingly widespread.

United Arab Emirates (UAE) was first announced the closure of this service began in October next, then followed that Saudi Arabia announced plans to block the BlackBerry Messenger service this Friday.

Then this issue continues to roll over to other countries such as India, Indonesia, Bahrain, Lebanon and Algeria. But not so many who know the story behind the original plan of this blocking.

As quoted by AlJazeera news site, before this issue emerged, the United Arab Emirates has indeed been trying to tap the country's BlackBerry services. Like other countries in the world, the UAE also wants to be able to monitor all communications traffic in their areas, including those that spread through the BlackBerry network.

According to Thomas Shambler, a Stuff Magazine Editor in Dubai, the UAE government first tried to entrap users of BlackBerry by sending malicious SMS messages on BlackBerry network.

"Last year, Etislat (service provider of mobile phones in the UAE) to send messages to many customers," said Shambler. Text messages that promised improvements in service, but in fact, driving customers to download software spy spyware alias.

However, the software was discovered. The day after the incident, immediately issued a RIM program software patches that can remove this spy. UAE government's efforts to monitor the BlackBerry users in the UAE, immediately foundered.

Finally, the UAE government asked RIM to provide the local server and provide a wider control so they can access information, which is encrypted on the network. The move was later followed by many other countries.

During this time, traffic BlackBerry mobile services around the world are instantly drawn to the RIM servers in Canada or the UK. Governments in countries that allow the BlackBerry service, can not tap these networks because they have no control servers in each country.

However, according to RIM, the information transmitted via the BlackBerry service is encrypted in such a way that RIM itself can not decrypt (decipher encryption) and read it.

No wonder then the BlackBerry service be the choice of communication for many government agencies around the world, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the U.S..

In addition, the U.S. government is also one of the biggest BlackBerry user. In 2005 alone, 100 thousand U.S. government use BlackBerry devices to its staff. Not only that, the BlackBerry is also a mainstay for journalists and human rights activists in various countries.

But, is it true consumers can truly rely on the security of their personal data on the BlackBerry service. Apparently, not really. According to the report AlJazeera, RIM allow some countries to be able to see the traffic flow information in the service. Different cases with the Arab countries who are ready to boycott the RIM.

"It seems that small countries like the UAE will not be given the ability to do the same thing," says Ian Brown, Senior Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute.

Accordingly, the UAE government has also accused RIM unfair, because assuming RIM does not give rights to the country's wiretapping, as RIM to give it to the U.S. government.

On the other hand, told Reuters, Mark Rasch, former head of the Computer Crimes Unit at the U.S. Justice Department, said that the U.S. government was capable of intercepting information that milling on the BlackBerry because the U.S. government does have a technology that enables this.

"The ability to tap a variety of communication tools are part of surveillance activities and intelligence and law enforcement around the world," he said.

Accordingly, BlackBerry customers can no longer assume that the service is 100 percent safe. But, if the majority of BlackBerry subscribers really care about wiretapping? Perhaps they are no different with its BlackBerry subscribers in the UAE.

"The BlackBerry customers there do not really bother with the wiretapping issue," said Thomas Shambler.

They're more worried if they blocked the BlackBerry service, how will they can send emails, send instant messages to people they know, or how they can continue to connect with their colleagues.