Research In Motion is all about getting its BlackBerry 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]