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BlackBerry hands over user data to help police 'kick ass,' insider says
- mikestew 10y agoMan, 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?
- AJ007 10y agoBased upon how narrow of a market they have left, this is probably a game ender for Blackberry branded devices.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoThe people who are still buying Blackberries won't hear about this.
- helb 10y ago> I'm never going to buy a Blackberry There soon won't be any Blackberry to buy anyway…
- tn13 10y agoAt 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.
- bpchaps 10y agoStart 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. Two tabs, and still a work in progress (waiting for their dns resolution logs now for the next step): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hgG79eIr8MbkjYrCvcTRN8n876KL8aXYYu5it8Lg0g8 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hgG79eIr8MbkjYrCvcTR...
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> Find a pro bono lawyer who can do a FOIA suit on your behalf How do you do this?
- bpchaps 10y agoWish 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.
- a_imho 10y agoI 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.
- java-man 10y agoThis, 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.
- sintaxi 10y ago> compelled, coerced, or bullied A warrant?
- java-man 10y agoIs there anything to prevent a court of law to issue a warrant requesting unlocking of a particular device by its user?
- sintaxi 10y agoI 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.
- Sir_Substance 10y agoI 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.
- hackuser 10y ago> RIM They are now called Blackberry Limited, not RIM.
- walrus01 10y agoRIMjobs for everyone!
- darwingr 10y agoIn the past I'd totally agree. But these days a large portion of RIM's target market in Canada is the government.
- walrus01 10y agoOh 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.
- mtgx 10y agoSo 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.
- brian-armstrong 10y agoThis 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? [1]: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q6iGe7vuGeQ http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q6iGe7vuGeQ
- brokenmachine 10y agoWell, that's the nail in the coffin... Bye bye Blackberry.
- justcommenting 10y agoCollaborators undermining the rule of law and due process. I doubt history will look kindly on these practices, and the story makes me even more eager to see RIM and its products in the dust bin.
- pekk 10y agoEven 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.
- ionised 10y ago> you just literally described Blackberry as equivalent to assisting the Nazis He literally did not do that.
- Naritai 10y agoTo 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.
- grizzles 10y agoI 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.
- secfirstmd 10y agoAgreed. Have worked with dozens of human rights defenders and journalists in repressive countries who thought that just because they had Blackberrys they were safe. :(
- mattm 10y agoWell, I'm a Canadian and I agree with him. Quite often in Canada you'll see commercials saying you shouldn't do something because "it's the law".
- Naritai 10y agoAmong your errors is conflating culture and race. Those aren't the same thing.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoBlackBerry is a ship that can't sink fast enough. I only feel for the people who will lose their jobs (those not in upper management at least).
- imchillyb 10y ago> ... those not in upper management ... Well, you did say people not monsters.
- batz 10y agoTheir 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. It's just all so....canadian.
- patrickbolle 10y agoGreat analogy. Hits home as a Leafs fan from Kitchener.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoSearched 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?
- dpc59 10y agoIf it's like the rest of the military industrial complex, odds are those companies are getting paid.
- dec0dedab0de 10y agoI 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.
- thought_alarm 10y agoThey'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.
- dec0dedab0de 10y agoahh, 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.
- orbitingpluto 10y agoI 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. The guy who created Ghost Commander ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ghostsq.commander https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ghostsq.co... ) ported it over to the Playbook. It is the only thing keeping that tablet usable.
- Aoyagi 10y agoAnd I've just realised what PRIV is supposed to refer to. Oh well, the device seemed so appealing....
- b01t 10y agoGoogle and Apple are part of PRISM, and Blackberry too now.. what options do we have left? Cyanogenmod?
- mt10DAR 10y agonope they're breached by microsoft : https://www.engadget.com/2015/04/16/microsoft-apps-cyanogen-android/ https://www.engadget.com/2015/04/16/microsoft-apps-cyanogen-... 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.
- duckingtest 10y agoChinese 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.
- vic-traill 10y agoThe 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!). [0] http://justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/emla-eej/mlatocan-ejaucan.html http://justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/emla-eej/mlatocan-ejaucan.htm...
- amag 10y agoMaybe, 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'.
- tclancy 10y agoThat's one way to differentiate yourself from the competition.
- jugbee 10y agoMan... I literally bought my PRIV just last week due to verified boot, hardware encryption and now i get this? Selling my almost brand new PRIV. 450$. PM
- arm 10y agoGood luck getting someone here to pay $450 for it though…