Last week, the French government reiterated a ban on government workers using BlackBerry devices to transmit sensitive data saying that foreign spies could intercept the data and what really goes into Camembert could get out. Sacre Bleu!
"No one, including RIM, has the ability to view the content of any data communication sent using the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution because all the data is encrypted," a RIM spokesperson said. More than 700,000 worldwide government workers in the US, Canada, Australia, Austria and New Zealand have BlackBerries, RIM said.
I imagine the French warning did lead however to all those governments putting together panels and committees to look into things. I don’t want to be cynical but I bet that French warning will probably end up costing the tax payers of the world millions.
Still, some people have some right to be concerned. The infamous Echelon program was designed to electronically eavesdrop on electronic conversations and it has been around for a long time. I am sure it has had some upgrades over the years. The US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. are apparently still using the program. And the U.S. government has also tried to derail several civil cases that accuse the National Security Agency of reading e-mail sent through various telecoms.
But we’ll trust the folks at RIM.