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| Black Berry Banned |
The government of Pakistan is “requesting” that three telecom companies stop providing BlackBerry’s encrypted messaging
services to customers, according to documents obtained by civil rights group Bytes for All Pakistan.
services to customers, according to documents obtained by civil rights group Bytes for All Pakistan.
According to the document, sent by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority, the request was spurred by “great concerns” expressed by Pakistan’s security agency. Specifically, the government wants the companies to “close” customers’ connections to BlackBerry’s business-oriented BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).
BES is used by companies to secure their employees’ communications. System administrators create their own cryptographic keys, which means that decrypting the communications going through the server is impossible for anyone listening in unless they have the keys, too. There is no “backdoor,” or another key, if you will, just for the Pakistani security agency to decrypt communications.
“This demonstrates, at a policy level, that a very large government is willing to ban communications if they can’t gain access to it,” said Chris Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at digital rights group Citizen Lab.”Maybe it’s just Pakistan, and nobody else will do it, but it’s certainly a strong change to, ‘If we can’t backdoor it, then we will ban it,’” he added.
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| PTA |
