BlackBerry CEO addresses story that Canadian police have its global encryption key
Last week, BlackBerrycame under fire after a report found the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to have had access to the company’s global encryption key since 2010. In response, CEO John Chen sought to redirect the focus of the story to how BlackBerry’s assistance provided to the Canadian police brought down two criminal organizations.
The joint investigative report, byMotherboard andVice, gave a glimpse of what transpired behind courtroom doors during a case calledProject Clemenza, which revolved around a 2011 gangland murder. It revealed that BlackBerry decrypted about “one million PIN-to-PIN” messages in connection with the investigation, thanks to a global encryption key. It is unclear who provided the key.
In a blog post titled “Lawful Access, Corporate Citizenship, and Doing What’s Right,”Chen writes BlackBerry has always chosen to do the right thing for “the citizenry,” within legal and ethical boundaries.
“We have long been clear in our stance that tech companies as good corporate citizens should comply with reasonable lawful access requests,” Chen said. “I have stated before that we are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good.”
“We have been able to find this balance even as governments have pressured us to change our ethical grounds.”
Chen says the company stood by its lawful access principles for the case, and said that BlackBerry’s Enterprise Server (BES) was never involved in the investigation. In fact,Motherboard’s report says the global encryption key unlocks all messages sent between consumer phones that uses PIN-to-PIN messages, but BES allows companies to have their own encryption key, and BlackBerry can’t access that.
“The defense in the case surmised that the RCMP must have used the ‘correct global encryption key,’ since any attempt to apply a key other than BlackBerry’s own global encryption key would have resulted in a garbled mess,” according to Motherboard.
Regardless, Chen mentions BES, and how it remains the “gold standard in government and enterprise-grade security.”
“Our BES continues to be impenetrable — also without the ability for backdoor access — and is the most secure mobile platform for managing all mobile devices,” he writes.
The news of BlackBerry’s aid in the 2010 Canadian investigation comes at a time when Apple isstill fighting the FBI’s requests for the Cupertino company to create a backdoor into the iPhone. Apple believes doing so would threaten the security and privacy of all of the company’s consumers, and would also cause it to lose public trust.
When the defense team on the case asked for more information about how the prosecutors got access to the key, the prosecution reiterated that BlackBerry’s cooperation should remain private, as any revelations could have a negative commercial impact on the company, and could compromise the police’s relationship with BlackBerry.
But the company isn’t offering access to just any government that requests it — Chen highlighted how Blackberrynearly exited the Pakistani market after the government requested access into BES email and messaging content. The company decided to stay in the country after Pakistan dropped its request thanks to “productive discussions.”
“We have been able to find this balance even as governments have pressured us to change our ethical grounds,” Chen said. “Despite these pressures, our position has been unwavering and our actions are proof we commit to these principles.”
There’s still no official word or comment about the global encryption key, and who provided it to the Canadian police.
Editors’ Recommendations
Can you believe that the first iPhone launched exactly 18 years ago on June 29? Do you remember what you were doing that day? Oh hang on, maybe you weren’t even born then.
The late Steve Jobs, then Apple’s CEO, had unveiled the revolutionary smartphone five months earlier, in January 2007. In the intervening months, the company created enough hype to encourage hordes of people to descend upon Apple Stores in the U.S. and beyond to purchase the device that was to truly transform the fortunes of the California-based tech company.
Read-it-later app Pocket is closing down in just a week’s time, so if you’re still using it, now’s the time to switch to a similar app.
As an avid user of Pocket pretty much since it launched in 2007 as Read It Later, I felt a little sad to receive a message in May informing me that it would be shutting down on July 8.
Prime Day isn't officially here yet, but Prime Day deals are. Or, at least a peak of what the deals are going to look like. One of the most exciting of these deals gives you a refurbished Amazon Fire Max 11 tablet for just $130, which is down $70 from the usual $200 and a full $100 less than the retail price of a completely new one. You can even save 20% more with an applicable trade-in. There's no doubt that this is one of the best tablet deals going on at the moment, so tap the button below to lock it in. Or, keep reading to see why you'll like this tablet, take a peek at what our time with it was like, and what it means for something to be refurbished to the 'Like-New' level at Amazon.
Buy Now
