Spying fears behind BlackBerry hiatus, says police chief

 

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By Reuters and Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 6 Sep 2010 at 08:29

Concern over international espionage – including by the UK – was the main motivation for the recent United Arab Emirates clampdown on Research in Motion's Blackberry services, according to Dubai's police chief.

RIM has faced a wave of threatened closures in the last few months as several countries seek access to BlackBerry message data on security grounds, but internal security was not the only reason Middle East countries wanted to be able to read messages, the official said.

“The Unites States is the primary beneficiary of having no controls over the BlackBerry, as it has an interest to spy on the UAE,” Dhahi Khalfan Tamim said in remarks carried by al-Khaleej news service. “The West has accused us of curbing the liberties of BlackBerry users, while America, Israel, Britain and other countries are allowed access to all transferred data.”

Tamim, who has been outspoken in blaming Israeli agents for the assassination of a top Palestinian militant at a Dubai hotel in January, did not say why Washington had an interest in spying on Western-allied UAE.

The UAE, where BlackBerry maker RIM has 500,000 users, has said it will suspend BlackBerry Messenger, email and Web browser services from October 11 unless the government is given access to encrypted messages.

Blackberry users won a reprieve on a shutdown in India last month, after RIM agreed to give India access to secure data, according to an Indian government source.

BlackBerry's Messenger application has spread rapidly in the Gulf, where it is a popular business and social networking tool. But because the data is encrypted and sent to offshore servers, it cannot be tracked locally.

That has raised fears in security-conscious Gulf states, especially in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, that a lack of access could hamper their ability spot potential spies or Islamic militants.