With India, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and now Indonesia getting huffy about impenetrable BlackBerry security empowering criminals, prominent political figures are now getting involved. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is sitting on the fence about the problem at hand, but has dedicated to help reach a solution.
“We are taking time to consult and analyze the full range of interests and issues at stake because we know that there is a legitimate security concern, but there’s also a legitimate right of free use and access. … So I think we will be pursuing both technical and expert discussions as we go.”
Sounds to me like she could be a reasonable mediator of the whole thing, but I wonder how interested Middle Eastern states would be in having the American government involved in the whole mess. RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis has made his stance clear: there is no reason that security and national regulations need to be mutually exclusive, and he’s willing to keep talking about it. The U.A.E is still locked in for shutting down BlackBerry e-mail, browser, and BBM data in October, and Saudi Arabia has already pulled the plug. While that’s bad news for RIM, other smartphone manufacturers may take this opportunity to feel the gap for enterprise-grade messaging.
[via WSJ]