WyBlog

UN Agency: All your BlackBerry are belong to us

If a UN mucky-muck gets his way all of our BlackBerry emails will soon be decoded and delivered to the governments of India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. These long-time sponsors of civil liberties and human rights are entangled in a dispute with BlackBerry maker Research in Motion over access to encrypted communications which pass through the company's Canadian servers.

RIM says the emails can't be decoded except by the intended recipient. In turn those countries (and several others) are in the process of banning BlackBerry services from being used within their borders unless RIM grants them unfettered access.

Noting that he sees "legitimate security concerns" ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure came down solidly on the side of totalitarian dictators worldwide when he said that all governments have the right to demand access to users' information from the maker of the BlackBerry.

Because yeah, everybody wants their favorite totalitarian dictator to read their email. What could possibly go wrong?

Why exactly is it this turkey's business anyway? Because the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) is the arm of the UN tasked with establishing worldwide standards for telephones and other electronic communications systems. Among other things they define country codes, assign radio frequencies, and allocate satellite orbits. They're also the guys behind the guys responsible for the proliferation of hundreds of new area codes in the US.

Since the BlackBerry is at heart a phone the ITU has jurisdiction. Or more precisely, they claim to have jurisdiction, and our internationalist president isn't about to dissuade them of that notion.

I hope for our sake that the Canadians are made of sterner stuff. Because if the UN succeeds here the next email you receive may very well have already been read by a Mullah or 2 in Saudi Arabia while being passed around the terrorist camps in the Bekaa Valley.

Wouldn't you think that was a "legitimate security concern" too?

Posted at 14:52 by Chris Wysocki   [/tech]   Comments | Archived | Perm Link |
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