RIM wants to secure BlackBerry camera with a lock and key
By Will Park on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 1:42 PM PST In Announcements, BlackBerry, RIM (Research in Motion), Research
Research In Motion is all about getting its BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) smartphones distributed for fleet-use in enterprise environments. Unfortunately, that means that corporate users will have to opt for the camera-less BlackBerry 8800 series. It would be a bad day to have corporate secrets walk out the door inside some cameraphone’s flash memory.
On the one hand, nixing the camera is a good security measure. On the other hand, corporate users won’t have a camera to play with when outside the office.
So, RIM has come up with a novel interesting old-school solution to keeping those trade-secrets from ever getting their picture taken. The latest patent application from the Canadian outfit outlines a method to lock-down and disable a smartphone’s camera with the help of a key. No, it’s not some high-tech encryption key, it’s your plain-old lock-and-key system.
When the key is inserted, the handset lets you take pictures with abandon. Remove the key and… not so much. Sounds secure enough – unless the key looks like the one shown in the diagram. Let’s see if this particular patent application makes it from drawing board to real-life.
[Via: CellPassion]
“Ottawa” not “Ottowa”
Yea, that key is ever so safe.
Yea, as if my employers will trust everyone to lock and unlock their camera phone when necessary. Still not a good idea. Can someone please provide me with a non-camera phone with bluetooth capability? I am not talking about a dinosaur and I do not want a blackberry either.