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From what I remember from early 2000’s only the air interface was encrypted. Since anyway they have to provide lawful intercept capability there was not much be

by ArnoVW 2y ago

From what I remember from early 2000’s only the air interface was encrypted. Since anyway they have to provide lawful intercept capability there was not much benefit in providing end to end encryption. It’s not like it was a top of mind feature for consumers.

Scoundreller 2y ago
> It’s not like it was a top of mind feature for consumers. BlackBerry got some market share for promoting their encryption. Of course the encryption was complete junk, possibly worse than junk because of the false sense of security, unless you were an enterprise customer. https://www.theregister.com/2016/04/15/canada_blackberry_water_cooler/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/04/15/canada_blackberry_wat...
- immibis 2y ago
  Blackberry's (probably) legally allowed to provide text message encryption, but telcos aren't. "Lawful intercept" (which should more accurately be called "gunpoint eavesdropping") is a legal requirement for all telcos, and the larger the telco, the more optimized and automated the process is required to be. They have to be able to read customer SMSes and tap phone calls. If the SMS happens to be gibberish, that's not their problem, but they can't make it gibberish.
- throw0101c 2y ago
  > BlackBerry got some market share for promoting their encryption. Consumer-to-consumer BB messages were not E2E encrypted, but if you had a BES connected to your (on-prem?) Exchange server then everything with-in your company was wrapped in a key unique to your organization. Further, I'm not sure if telcos could read the messages either: the bits were routed through RIM's central servers. For evidence of this, several countries made deals for access to the bit flow under threat of banning the service: * https://www.wired.com/story/blackberry-india/ https://www.wired.com/story/blackberry-india/ * https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/07/saudi-arabia-deal-avert-blackberry-ban https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/07/saudi-arabia-d...

by ArnoVW 2y ago

Scoundreller 2y ago

> It’s not like it was a top of mind feature for consumers. BlackBerry got some market share for promoting their encryption. Of course the encryption was complete junk, possibly worse than junk because of the false sense of security, unless you were an enterprise customer. https://www.theregister.com/2016/04/15/canada_blackberry_water_cooler/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/04/15/canada_blackberry_wat...

immibis 2y ago
Blackberry's (probably) legally allowed to provide text message encryption, but telcos aren't. "Lawful intercept" (which should more accurately be called "gunpoint eavesdropping") is a legal requirement for all telcos, and the larger the telco, the more optimized and automated the process is required to be. They have to be able to read customer SMSes and tap phone calls. If the SMS happens to be gibberish, that's not their problem, but they can't make it gibberish.
throw0101c 2y ago
> BlackBerry got some market share for promoting their encryption. Consumer-to-consumer BB messages were not E2E encrypted, but if you had a BES connected to your (on-prem?) Exchange server then everything with-in your company was wrapped in a key unique to your organization. Further, I'm not sure if telcos could read the messages either: the bits were routed through RIM's central servers. For evidence of this, several countries made deals for access to the bit flow under threat of banning the service: * https://www.wired.com/story/blackberry-india/ https://www.wired.com/story/blackberry-india/ * https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/07/saudi-arabia-deal-avert-blackberry-ban https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/07/saudi-arabia-d...