BlackBerry caught in data access row

The premium BlackBerry mobile service by Research In Motion's (RIM) came under attack from a few countries as it doesn't give access to security agencies wary of its misuse by miscreants. India, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Indonesia, Lebanon and Algeria all voiced concerns over lack of access to communications sent through the popular smartphone device.



Saudi Arabia started blocking Blackberry services, but some reports suggested that users were still able to access the service even as talks between the Canadian smartphone maker and the Saudi telecom regulator made progress. Saudi Arabia is RIM's biggest Middle East market with about 700,000 BlackBerry users. The Saudi government says that the ban is for reasons of national security. UAE has 500,000 BlackBerry users and plans a more sweeping ban from October 11 targeting not only BlackBerry Messenger but also email and web browsing on the device.

The Canadian company said that it has never provided anything unique to the government of one country and cannot accommodate any request for a copy of a customer's encryption key. The Canadian government and media fully backed the security features of BlackBerry. CEO Mike Lazaridis said people who want to gain access to coded messages sent via BlackBerry needed lessons about the internet. "Everything on the internet is encrypted. This is not a BlackBerry-only issue. If they can't deal with the internet then they should shut it off," he said.

Meanwhile, Indonesia said it has no plans to ban BlackBerry services. Earlier, Indonesia had sent mixed signals about the operations of the Canadian company's smartphone. The telecom regulator, Badan Regulasi Telekomunikasi Indonesia, said that it was considering a ban of the BlackBerry services if RIM failed to establish a local representative and server. Separately, the US initiated talks with countries like India, UAE and Saudi Arabia, besides RIM so as to address the security concerns.