Searched Linkedin for people with titles containing "Public Safety Operations" and who work, or have worked, at Blackberry.
One of them is now the "Manager of Law Enforcement Operations" at Kik. She describes her job as involving creating and fostering "positive working relationships with law enforcement and government agencies worldwide," and prides herself on "successfully manag[ing] large-scale projects from start to finish while hitting targets". Shudders.
It's amusing that the state has coerced private companies into running its apparatus. Has anybody studied the implicit "tax rate" across economies including such costs of regulation, compliance and state security?
I really don't understand how RIM manages to consistently misunderstand their target market so badly.
Not that they have many (or any) fans left, but back when they were the bees knees, they were used by and often mandatory company phones for government departments and fortune 500 companies exactly because they were considered the apex of mobile security.
I know it's been a while since they were the apex of anything but jesus guys, at least pretend to try or something.
Oh they're still the apex of something, now they're the apex of Ontario-Quebec region Canadian technology corporation failures, having taken the place of the previous reigning champion, Nortel.
There are still a good number of federal government offices based in Quebec, including one massive complex (Place du Portage) across the river from Ottawa. BlackBerries are still handed out to a fair number of government employees here.
Not sure if all this applies to corporate BlackBerry environments, which have their own servers, and generate their own sets of keys.
I think you need to ask the company (or government agency) for their keys to decrypt their conversations over the BlackBerry system.
The consumer-mode BlackBerry stuff has long since been open to law enforcement, but the corporate communications are locked by the corporations themselves, and only they have the keys.
Luckily, it turns out no one has a blackberry. I kid, but also I'm pretty sure it's been at least 5 or so years since I've seen someone with one. Are they still prevalent in the states?
Oh you would be amazed at what their management can do, I got told of by a senior manager for asking a question back in 2006 and asked why we were abandoning the business users in favour of the consumers users with the pearl and focus bias towards consumer over business. I left 2007.
Indeed same year I'm recorded in a townhall meeting asking about QA and same manager saying, yes we will be doing that down the line.
Some brilliant and amazing technical people there in my time but darn, some serious seagull management types who failed to fly away. Interestingly most bad management I find have no technical background. Though have known good managers who had no technical background, they are rare and none at RIM that fitted that niche.
For me I feel they used Dilbert as an inspirational guide for running a business at times.
BBM (a consumer-level Facebook Messenger type app) is not BES (the mobile security system for corporate/government enterprises that BlackBerry theoretically does not hold keys to).
It would be like when Microsoft turns over Live Messenger and Skype IM's to law enforcement and people said "well, I guess no company will ever buy/use a Microsoft Server again". And yet, companies still buy Microsoft Servers.
That difference doesn't make this any less bad. But I wouldn't expect any major fallout from it either.
Man, this pisses me off so much I'm...I'm...I'm never going to buy a Blackberry! After Chen's comments on the San Bernadino case, I'm not surprised much. I should be outraged or something, but what am I going to do? Petition my government? BB is Canadian, I'm U. S. Not buy a phone I never stood a chance of even considering? Recommend to my boss that she not buy BBs for the team, like she was never going to do? Not write software for BB, just like I've been doing for, like, ever?
Start by whipping out clever FOIA requests to find information on it. Dig, dig, then dig more. Find a pro bono lawyer who can do a FOIA suit on your behalf. You'd be surprised by how much information you can get so long as you're patient and can cleverly avoid "unduly burdensome" rejections.
For example, you can now get the Chicago's mayor's phone records by requesting it through their IT department, who asks the phone company to parse their billing logs, which includes the phone records.
I like your work, hope it gets traction. FOIAs could very well raise some much needed awareness and push back on mass data collection and surveillance practices when government is on the other end of it.
Wish I could help out here.. I found my lawyer through a friend. Though, in Illinois, FOIA pays out a decent amount if you win a FOIA suit. Finding a lawyer to help out might not be that hard if similar laws exist where you live.
If you can't find a lawyer, find someone locally who knows FOIA very well. Lots of activism and open data crowds have loads of experience with it.
At this rate there wont be any blackberry. Also, it was Apple that had resources to fight back. If it was my startup I would have not choice but to comply or shut shop.
So Blackberry supposedly sells "secure devices" and "secure messaging" and other services, only to brag behind customers' backs about how they "kicked ass" in betraying their customers' trust and handing their data over to the police? Guilty or not, that's ultimately for a judge to decide, not the police, or Blackberry. The point is, it shouldn't be Blackberry's job to betray its customers like this, certainly not while selling them "high security".
From my point of view, good riddance Blackberry. You will not be missed.
This, unfortunately, is inevitable. Any communication provider that controls the keys (i.e. no client-side key management) will eventually be compelled, coerced, or bullied into sharing some details of the users' communications.
I actually think this very situation is happening in the states right now where someone is "required" to unlock their encrypted hard drive and the defendant is claiming to have forgot the password. Not sure what has happened with the case though.
Even if you were ever so slightly indirect, you just literally described Blackberry as equivalent to assisting the Nazis. The apparently intended parallel is that the US government or Canadian government is the same as the Nazis.
To some extent this is a reflection on the company's Canadian culture. Canadians tend, to the extent that can ever be generalized about a nation of people, to be pro-government and assume that the government may not be perfect but has the best interests of its citizens at heart. For example, Americans refer to their government decisions as 'they decided', but Canadians say 'we decided'.
Given this, I'm not surprised BB thinks they're doing the right thing by helping governments spy on their people.
Source: I'm a Canadian who has lived in the US for 8 years. I was quite patriotic in my youth, so I've spent some time reflecting on the differences between Canada and the US.
I don't think you can generalize at all. Your comment is essentially self stereotyping. I'm good at math so I must be asian. Oops, that doesn't work for me.
Blackberry was a great company once, with wonderfully generous founders that donated tens of millions of dollars to fundamental physics research. No longer.
Now the Blackberry PRIV is PRIV until they say it's UNPRIV. That sounds like false advertising to me. I feel downright sorry for their customers in repressive countries.
There have been quite a few stories lately about their sales doing terribly. I wouldn't be surprised if this leak was some kind of purposeful act of desperation to drive sales by ingratiating themselves with their government and corporate accounts that see this as a feature. For shame.
Agreed. Have worked with dozens of human rights defenders and journalists in repressive countries who thought that just because they had Blackberrys they were safe. :(
>Major League Baseball's drug investigation that saw New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez suspended in 2014
I looked this up. Seems to be in the US, and also, it's just some guy using personal drugs, albeit for profit. Shouldn't even be an offense, let alone something for police to "kick ass" in.
Using cultural traits to explain specific actions is always a tenuous argument, i agree. I do think that such an action will be treated more kindly by the Canadian press than it would by an American one, though. Let's see.
The real issue that jumps out at me is that BB is assisting companies in side-stepping the MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty) which gives the Canadian government the legal authority to obtain court orders on behalf of countries that are parties to mutual legal assistance agreements.
As the article notes "U.S. law prohibits the likes of Apple, Facebook, and Google from intercepting communications on behalf of foreign agencies', in Canada it is not prohibited but should include MLAT [0] in the workflow, which would slow the process down and ensure some eyes on the request that don't have a commercial interest at stake.
BB is receiving these request from foreign operators directly.
For BB to seemingly satisfy these requests with such, well, gusto is disturbing to me, both as a Canadian as as someone who does still carry a work-issued BB (a Z30, it's a great mobile device!).
This article makes me wonder about the interview[1] where Lazaridis walked out after being asked about BlackBerry security. Perhaps he was feeling defensive about these practices?
I received a couple free BB Playbooks. Still a good cardio gym tablet, because I don't care if it gets smashed or stolen. Battery life is great, I only need to charge it every 3 days or so. Alas, QNX...
Used to be annoyed that it needed to phone home every single time I connected by Wi-Fi. There is also a security vulnerability on port 4455, can't remember what it is called though.
Maybe, in the face of losing customers to Apple and Samsung (et al), they are trying to cut their own little niche in the mobile market among people who has nothing to hide and likes it when they help the police 'kick ass'.
I don't understand how blackberry has access to intercept anything. Are all phones constantly phoning home checking if i_belong_to_a_bad_guy == True maybe at the time of a software update they base it on one of the unique identifiers. Ultimately though, who cares this day and age the only people I know using blackberries are people with big hands who like to type fast.
They're talking about data that is dispatched through Blackberry's network: BBM messages and their consumer internet service (BIS) that handles email and web traffic on older devices.
BlackBerry will turn over BBM messages in the same way that the phone company will turn over SMS messages, and Microsoft and Yahoo and Google will turn over email messages.
All of those companies have to operate within US law. The controversy here is related to how BlackBerry is cooperating with less-friendly foreign governments.
ahh, so not BES data or any arbitrary data on a consumer phone. That makes sense then. Maybe there should be an open standard for data requests, and transparency, and if you get caught breaking it you get removed from DNS and BGP.
Chinese smartphones.
They may or may not have backdoors in them, but then China state surveillance doesn't care about you, unless you work on a missile research or something similar.
If we're open about it nothing is really secure anymore. Nothing can really provide us with security atm, i would even hesitate to trust a company like blackphone.
I side towards abstiance, use an older dumb/feature-phone thats less likely to have backdoors (downside is its less likely to have the latest security updates). Dont send revealing photos, dont carry a gps tracker with you. Remove your presence for the web, stop providing companies with all your data (facebook etc) and actually meet people face to face for your conversations.
The only argument i can think of against the above is that people want to listen to their music and audiobooks on the go. Simple solution, get a feature phone which can support that or accept that your life is now open to everyone who wants to know everything about you.
Their best hope is to get their assets acquired by a big defense contractor like MOT, BAE, etc, to supply the niche of north american public sector mobile devices.
Like a Canadian hockey team Blackberry insists they invented the game, but every time they get to the playoffs they choke because they're just so overwhelmed at being invited.
Any interesting engineering they might have done in the past is dwarfed by their farcical inability to turn it into something people actually wanted.
One of them is now the "Manager of Law Enforcement Operations" at Kik. She describes her job as involving creating and fostering "positive working relationships with law enforcement and government agencies worldwide," and prides herself on "successfully manag[ing] large-scale projects from start to finish while hitting targets". Shudders.
It's amusing that the state has coerced private companies into running its apparatus. Has anybody studied the implicit "tax rate" across economies including such costs of regulation, compliance and state security?