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Wasn’t there also an issue of allowing foreign governments to MitM their service? All the data was routed through Canada, right?

jariel 7y ago
Yes, but that's an entirely different and complicated can of worms. Due to its 'highly secure nature' it was sought after by individuals within regimes that had known surveillance and BB was way ahead of FB/Google in terms of attention by national powers around the world and having to 'deal with them' - at very least because it was actually used by entities in the first place! One of the drawbacks of Barack Obama using your device is that it's 'front and centre' and 'widely used' by every relevant 'agency' in the world. It was a hugely difficult issue; hackernews tends to be 'anti state surveillance' in all forms - personally, I'm not as long as there's judicial oversight/applied properly (though sometimes it's not the case even in 'good' regimes) - the fact is basically every country you can think of wanted some type of special deal, the details of which I'm not at liberty to go into sufficed to say it was complicated on every level. I can say however that Venezuela specifically was never going to get any help from us, and that BB was huge in that country due to it's effective protection from federal sources. Several countries like this were 'big blips' in sales due to the networking effects of this and other things. Penetration of BlackBerry around the world was very irregular, not like other platforms.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  > I can say however that Venezuela specifically was never going to get any help from us Why specifically not Venezuela?
  - jariel 7y ago
    The Chavez regime is corrupt and totalitarian (and adversarial to the West, aligned with Cuba/Russia) without the geopolitical leverage to get away with such things, unlike like Saudi Arabia ... as an example of a country that does questionable things but still gets access to things like fancy weapons systems. I wonder to this day how much Google and FB hands over to the Saudis, Russians etc..
WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
Blackberry is a Canadian company.. but the general goals were to ensure all data was encrypted and no government would get access to it.
- jariel 7y ago
  "but the general goals were to ensure all data was encrypted and no government would get access to it." Kind of, but not quite. Little known history: BlackBerry 'became encrypted' because back in the days when it was really just a 'pager with email' - North American carriers (channel partners) were actually reading BB executives emails during negotiations (!!!). BB discovered this and decided to start with the encryption. Seriously - the first 'illegal' act was by BB customers/channel partners! From there, it was always pragmatic. BB was never specifically motivated by protecting individuals from governments persey.

jariel 7y ago

Yes, but that's an entirely different and complicated can of worms. Due to its 'highly secure nature' it was sought after by individuals within regimes that had known surveillance and BB was way ahead of FB/Google in terms of attention by national powers around the world and having to 'deal with them' - at very least because it was actually used by entities in the first place! One of the drawbacks of Barack Obama using your device is that it's 'front and centre' and 'widely used' by every relevant 'agency' in the world. It was a hugely difficult issue; hackernews tends to be 'anti state surveillance' in all forms - personally, I'm not as long as there's judicial oversight/applied properly (though sometimes it's not the case even in 'good' regimes) - the fact is basically every country you can think of wanted some type of special deal, the details of which I'm not at liberty to go into sufficed to say it was complicated on every level. I can say however that Venezuela specifically was never going to get any help from us, and that BB was huge in that country due to it's effective protection from federal sources. Several countries like this were 'big blips' in sales due to the networking effects of this and other things. Penetration of BlackBerry around the world was very irregular, not like other platforms.

Fnoord 7y ago
> I can say however that Venezuela specifically was never going to get any help from us Why specifically not Venezuela?
- jariel 7y ago
  The Chavez regime is corrupt and totalitarian (and adversarial to the West, aligned with Cuba/Russia) without the geopolitical leverage to get away with such things, unlike like Saudi Arabia ... as an example of a country that does questionable things but still gets access to things like fancy weapons systems. I wonder to this day how much Google and FB hands over to the Saudis, Russians etc..

WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago

Blackberry is a Canadian company.. but the general goals were to ensure all data was encrypted and no government would get access to it.

jariel 7y ago
"but the general goals were to ensure all data was encrypted and no government would get access to it." Kind of, but not quite. Little known history: BlackBerry 'became encrypted' because back in the days when it was really just a 'pager with email' - North American carriers (channel partners) were actually reading BB executives emails during negotiations (!!!). BB discovered this and decided to start with the encryption. Seriously - the first 'illegal' act was by BB customers/channel partners! From there, it was always pragmatic. BB was never specifically motivated by protecting individuals from governments persey.