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Will the UAE Blackberry Suspension Affect You?

The Director of the Telecommunication Regulation Authority in the UAE :

“With no solution available and in the public interest, in order to affect resolution of this issue, as of October 11, 2010, Blackberry Messenger, Blackberry Email and Blackberry Web-browsing services will be suspended until an acceptable solution can be developed and applied.”

Apparently Saudi Arabia has followed suit..

Saudi Arabia has started blocking BlackBerry Messenger at this time, but not email, web browsing, or other data services.

Should you be worried about this if you don’t live in the UAE or Saudi?

I think that perhaps you should. The reason that these countries are not happy about RIM’s services are two fold.

• On the one hand they don’t like that fact that all transmissions from these devices are encrypted, and go through Research In Motion’s own servers. Thus preventing government monitoring.
• On the other they cite cultural reasons for wanting to control these services. Loosely translated this means that they are concerned that their youth are using these devices to “socialise” electronically in un-Islamic ways.

If you live in a country that likes to exert control over the internet, or that has strict views on religion and relationships, then you should perhaps be concerned that your government might be emboldened by this move and follow suit.

India raised similar security concerns last week, and Bahrain in April warned against using BlackBerry Messenger to distribute local news. As far back as 2007, France cautioned officials about using the services.

From Reuters.

Ultimately, I think that RIM will have to setup services that allow governments in these countries to ‘snoop’ on Blackberry data.