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The Gulf BlackBerry ban: not scary, just stupid
The BlackBerry ban by Saudi Arabia and the UAE will have no effect and won't last long.
By Milo Yiannopoulos
Published: 10:03AM BST 02 Aug 2010
24 Comments
The Blackberry was first predicted more than a century ago, by Nikola Tesla, the electrical engineer: Blackberry 'predicted a century ago' by pioneering physicist Nikola Tesla
The invention of the Blackberry was predicted over a 100 years ago by Tesla. Photo: AP
One of the great joys of owning a BlackBerry handset is the brilliant BlackBerry Messenger: its dead easy to use, fantastically simple, super-quick and rock-solid reliable. But its precisely that bit of the BlackBerry service that Saudi Arabia is banning.
Why? Because it turns out that there are limits to what mobile networks and governments can listen in on when you use a BlackBerry: namely, when you use the inbuilt instant messaging client or send a message using someones BlackBerry PIN, the data is sent in encrypted form straight to RIMs servers in Canada. Its not available to your local government, or mobile network, to intercept and monitor.
Saudi Arabia says it can't tolerate messages sent via BlackBerry Messenger because they cant be monitored for national security or, even more chillingly, social values. The UAE wants to ban basically all BlackBerry data services thats email, instant messaging and PIN messages too, for the same reasons.
The UAE has been tetchy with RIM for some time now, demanding access to its customers data and then playing dirty when RIM refused to co-operate, installing spyware on citizens handsets in an attempt to get around RIMs obstinacy. But there was an outcry about the silently installed software that triggered a humiliating climbdown later. So, like a nine-year-old child harbouring a grudge, the UAE waited to exact its revenge. And now it has.
But let's stop and think about this for a moment. These are countries with enormous populations and a combined GDP of over $600bn. They are major power centres in the Middle East. One of them is an international centre of trade and industry. Yet theyre behaving, if youll forgive the expression, like spoilt children, throwing half a million toys out of the pram because they didnt get their own way (according to the Wall Street Journal, the UAE has about 500,000 BlackBerry users).
Now, the Islamic world has a complicated relationship with technology, and, you might argue, with intellectual enquiry in general (which is perhaps why there isnt a single world-class university in the Islamic world). And remember these are countries still to learn the lesson that determined, resourceful criminals and internet activists will not be deterred, nor defeated, by the odd proxy server or firewall.
If we believe the official line, that makes this ban a primitive, knee-jerk response to a technology the two states are scared of because they cant control it. A bit like blogging, which weve seen a ruthless but spectacularly ineffective crackdown on in Iran. (Iran, too, claims that social harmony and national security are at stake.) But come on: do the administrations in these countries seriously believe that blocking a few websites or BlackBerry features is going to help with the fight against terrorists, or dissent from within their own borders?
They just cant be that stupid. So while the Saudis are making out that it all comes down to snooping Abdulrahman Mazi of Saudi Telecom says the decision is designed to force RIM to make customer communications available when needed it seems much more likely, particularly in the case of the UAE, that this is a daft and disproportionate punishment for RIMs insubordination.
But if this is an attempt to strong-arm RIM into handing over its customers data, it will fail. Not least because, for RIM, the Middle East is a small market, the loss of which wont hit very hard. And the company has bigger fish to fry right now: its currently throwing everything its got at chasing Apple both in the smartphone market, with the upcoming Bold 9800, and in tablet computing (watch out for news of the BlackPad over the next six months).
Blocking BlackBerrys data services is pointless, and will have no effect whatsoever on terrorists or dissidents. It will only serve to inconvenience citizens of the two states concerned. That, and itll provide another delicious PR disaster for the West to bash the Gulf around the head with. (A couple more gaffes like this and the Middle East will have cemented its reputation as backward, petty and technophobic.)
So I reckon, when the implications - and the headlines - set in, well see yet another climbdown from the UAE and Saudi on this one. Give it a month.
The BlackBerry ban by Saudi Arabia and the UAE will have no effect and won't last long.
By Milo Yiannopoulos
Published: 10:03AM BST 02 Aug 2010
24 Comments
The Blackberry was first predicted more than a century ago, by Nikola Tesla, the electrical engineer: Blackberry 'predicted a century ago' by pioneering physicist Nikola Tesla
The invention of the Blackberry was predicted over a 100 years ago by Tesla. Photo: AP
One of the great joys of owning a BlackBerry handset is the brilliant BlackBerry Messenger: its dead easy to use, fantastically simple, super-quick and rock-solid reliable. But its precisely that bit of the BlackBerry service that Saudi Arabia is banning.
Why? Because it turns out that there are limits to what mobile networks and governments can listen in on when you use a BlackBerry: namely, when you use the inbuilt instant messaging client or send a message using someones BlackBerry PIN, the data is sent in encrypted form straight to RIMs servers in Canada. Its not available to your local government, or mobile network, to intercept and monitor.
Saudi Arabia says it can't tolerate messages sent via BlackBerry Messenger because they cant be monitored for national security or, even more chillingly, social values. The UAE wants to ban basically all BlackBerry data services thats email, instant messaging and PIN messages too, for the same reasons.
The UAE has been tetchy with RIM for some time now, demanding access to its customers data and then playing dirty when RIM refused to co-operate, installing spyware on citizens handsets in an attempt to get around RIMs obstinacy. But there was an outcry about the silently installed software that triggered a humiliating climbdown later. So, like a nine-year-old child harbouring a grudge, the UAE waited to exact its revenge. And now it has.
But let's stop and think about this for a moment. These are countries with enormous populations and a combined GDP of over $600bn. They are major power centres in the Middle East. One of them is an international centre of trade and industry. Yet theyre behaving, if youll forgive the expression, like spoilt children, throwing half a million toys out of the pram because they didnt get their own way (according to the Wall Street Journal, the UAE has about 500,000 BlackBerry users).
Now, the Islamic world has a complicated relationship with technology, and, you might argue, with intellectual enquiry in general (which is perhaps why there isnt a single world-class university in the Islamic world). And remember these are countries still to learn the lesson that determined, resourceful criminals and internet activists will not be deterred, nor defeated, by the odd proxy server or firewall.
If we believe the official line, that makes this ban a primitive, knee-jerk response to a technology the two states are scared of because they cant control it. A bit like blogging, which weve seen a ruthless but spectacularly ineffective crackdown on in Iran. (Iran, too, claims that social harmony and national security are at stake.) But come on: do the administrations in these countries seriously believe that blocking a few websites or BlackBerry features is going to help with the fight against terrorists, or dissent from within their own borders?
They just cant be that stupid. So while the Saudis are making out that it all comes down to snooping Abdulrahman Mazi of Saudi Telecom says the decision is designed to force RIM to make customer communications available when needed it seems much more likely, particularly in the case of the UAE, that this is a daft and disproportionate punishment for RIMs insubordination.
But if this is an attempt to strong-arm RIM into handing over its customers data, it will fail. Not least because, for RIM, the Middle East is a small market, the loss of which wont hit very hard. And the company has bigger fish to fry right now: its currently throwing everything its got at chasing Apple both in the smartphone market, with the upcoming Bold 9800, and in tablet computing (watch out for news of the BlackPad over the next six months).
Blocking BlackBerrys data services is pointless, and will have no effect whatsoever on terrorists or dissidents. It will only serve to inconvenience citizens of the two states concerned. That, and itll provide another delicious PR disaster for the West to bash the Gulf around the head with. (A couple more gaffes like this and the Middle East will have cemented its reputation as backward, petty and technophobic.)
So I reckon, when the implications - and the headlines - set in, well see yet another climbdown from the UAE and Saudi on this one. Give it a month.
!!!! Bad for BB lovers
