
BlackBerry hands over user data to help police 'kick ass,' insider says - yq
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/blackberry-taps-user-messages-1.3620186
======
JumpCrisscross
Searched Linkedin for people with titles containing "Public Safety Operations"
and who work, or have worked, at Blackberry.

One of them is now the "Manager of Law Enforcement Operations" at Kik. She
describes her job as involving creating and fostering "positive working
relationships with law enforcement and government agencies worldwide," and
prides herself on "successfully manag[ing] large-scale projects from start to
finish while hitting targets". _Shudders._

It's amusing that the state has coerced private companies into running its
apparatus. Has anybody studied the implicit "tax rate" across economies
including such costs of regulation, compliance and state security?

~~~
dpc59
If it's like the rest of the military industrial complex, odds are those
companies are getting paid.

------
Sir_Substance
I really don't understand how RIM manages to consistently misunderstand their
target market so badly.

Not that they have many (or any) fans left, but back when they were the bees
knees, they were used by and often mandatory company phones for government
departments and fortune 500 companies exactly because they were considered the
apex of mobile security.

I know it's been a while since they were the apex of anything but jesus guys,
at least pretend to try or something.

~~~
walrus01
Oh they're still the apex of something, now they're the apex of Ontario-Quebec
region Canadian technology corporation failures, having taken the place of the
previous reigning champion, Nortel.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
I thought Nortel renamed itself A Louer.

~~~
jameskegel
literally means "for rent".

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Yessir. As observed driving around Montreal circa 2003.

------
mikestew
Man, this pisses me off so much I'm...I'm...I'm never going to buy a
Blackberry! After Chen's comments on the San Bernadino case, I'm not surprised
much. I should be outraged or something, but what am I going to do? Petition
my government? BB is Canadian, I'm U. S. Not buy a phone I never stood a
chance of even considering? Recommend to my boss that she not buy BBs for the
team, like she was never going to do? Not write software for BB, just like
I've been doing for, like, ever?

~~~
bpchaps
Start by whipping out clever FOIA requests to find information on it. Dig,
dig, then dig more. Find a pro bono lawyer who can do a FOIA suit on your
behalf. You'd be surprised by how much information you can get so long as
you're patient and can cleverly avoid "unduly burdensome" rejections.

For example, you can now get the Chicago's mayor's phone records by requesting
it through their IT department, who asks the phone company to parse their
billing logs, which includes the phone records.

Two tabs, and still a work in progress (waiting for their dns resolution logs
now for the next step):
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hgG79eIr8MbkjYrCvcTR...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hgG79eIr8MbkjYrCvcTRN8n876KL8aXYYu5it8Lg0g8)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Find a pro bono lawyer who can do a FOIA suit on your behalf_

How do you do this?

~~~
bpchaps
Wish I could help out here.. I found my lawyer through a friend. Though, in
Illinois, FOIA pays out a decent amount if you win a FOIA suit. Finding a
lawyer to help out might not be that hard if similar laws exist where you
live.

If you can't find a lawyer, find someone locally who knows FOIA very well.
Lots of activism and open data crowds have loads of experience with it.

------
mtgx
So Blackberry supposedly sells "secure devices" and "secure messaging" and
other services, only to brag behind customers' backs about how they "kicked
ass" in betraying their customers' trust and handing their data over to the
police? Guilty or not, that's ultimately for a judge to decide, not the
police, or Blackberry. The point is, it shouldn't be Blackberry's job to
betray its customers like this, certainly not while selling them "high
security".

From my point of view, good riddance Blackberry. You will not be missed.

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java-man
This, unfortunately, is inevitable. Any communication provider that controls
the keys (i.e. no client-side key management) will eventually be compelled,
coerced, or bullied into sharing some details of the users' communications.

~~~
sintaxi
> compelled, coerced, or bullied

A warrant?

~~~
java-man
Is there anything to prevent a court of law to issue a warrant requesting
unlocking of a particular device by its user?

~~~
sintaxi
I actually think this very situation is happening in the states right now
where someone is "required" to unlock their encrypted hard drive and the
defendant is claiming to have forgot the password. Not sure what has happened
with the case though.

------
justcommenting
_Collaborators_ undermining the rule of law and due process.

I doubt history will look kindly on these practices, and the story makes me
even more eager to see RIM and its products in the dust bin.

~~~
pekk
Even if you were ever so slightly indirect, you just literally described
Blackberry as equivalent to assisting the Nazis. The apparently intended
parallel is that the US government or Canadian government is the same as the
Nazis.

~~~
ionised
> you just literally described Blackberry as equivalent to assisting the Nazis

He literally did not do that.

------
Naritai
To some extent this is a reflection on the company's Canadian culture.
Canadians tend, to the extent that can ever be generalized about a nation of
people, to be pro-government and assume that the government may not be perfect
but has the best interests of its citizens at heart. For example, Americans
refer to their government decisions as 'they decided', but Canadians say 'we
decided'.

Given this, I'm not surprised BB thinks they're doing the right thing by
helping governments spy on their people.

Source: I'm a Canadian who has lived in the US for 8 years. I was quite
patriotic in my youth, so I've spent some time reflecting on the differences
between Canada and the US.

~~~
grizzles
I don't think you can generalize at all. Your comment is essentially self
stereotyping. I'm good at math so I must be asian. Oops, that doesn't work for
me.

Blackberry was a great company once, with wonderfully generous founders that
donated tens of millions of dollars to fundamental physics research. No
longer.

Now the Blackberry PRIV is PRIV until they say it's UNPRIV. That sounds like
false advertising to me. I feel downright sorry for their customers in
repressive countries.

There have been quite a few stories lately about their sales doing terribly. I
wouldn't be surprised if this leak was some kind of purposeful act of
desperation to drive sales by ingratiating themselves with their government
and corporate accounts that see this as a feature. For shame.

~~~
secfirstmd
Agreed. Have worked with dozens of human rights defenders and journalists in
repressive countries who thought that just because they had Blackberrys they
were safe. :(

------
vic-traill
The real issue that jumps out at me is that BB is assisting companies in side-
stepping the MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty) which gives the Canadian
government the legal authority to obtain court orders on behalf of countries
that are parties to mutual legal assistance agreements.

As the article notes "U.S. law prohibits the likes of Apple, Facebook, and
Google from intercepting communications on behalf of foreign agencies', in
Canada it is not prohibited but should include MLAT [0] in the workflow, which
would slow the process down and ensure some eyes on the request that don't
have a commercial interest at stake.

BB is receiving these request from foreign operators directly.

For BB to seemingly satisfy these requests with such, well, _gusto_ is
disturbing to me, both as a Canadian as as someone who does still carry a
work-issued BB (a Z30, it's a great mobile device!).

[0] [http://justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/emla-eej/mlatocan-
ejaucan.htm...](http://justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/emla-eej/mlatocan-ejaucan.html)

------
brian-armstrong
This article makes me wonder about the interview[1] where Lazaridis walked out
after being asked about BlackBerry security. Perhaps he was feeling defensive
about these practices?

[1]:
[http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q6iGe7vuGeQ](http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q6iGe7vuGeQ)

------
orbitingpluto
I received a couple free BB Playbooks. Still a good cardio gym tablet, because
I don't care if it gets smashed or stolen. Battery life is great, I only need
to charge it every 3 days or so. Alas, QNX...

Used to be annoyed that it needed to phone home every single time I connected
by Wi-Fi. There is also a security vulnerability on port 4455, can't remember
what it is called though.

The guy who created Ghost Commander (
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ghostsq.co...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ghostsq.commander)
) ported it over to the Playbook. It is the only thing keeping that tablet
usable.

------
amag
Maybe, in the face of losing customers to Apple and Samsung (et al), they are
trying to cut their own little niche in the mobile market among people who has
nothing to hide and likes it when they help the police 'kick ass'.

------
brokenmachine
Well, that's the nail in the coffin... Bye bye Blackberry.

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dec0dedab0de
I don't understand how blackberry has access to intercept anything. Are all
phones constantly phoning home checking if i_belong_to_a_bad_guy == True maybe
at the time of a software update they base it on one of the unique
identifiers. Ultimately though, who cares this day and age the only people I
know using blackberries are people with big hands who like to type fast.

~~~
thought_alarm
They're talking about data that is dispatched through Blackberry's network:
BBM messages and their consumer internet service (BIS) that handles email and
web traffic on older devices.

BlackBerry will turn over BBM messages in the same way that the phone company
will turn over SMS messages, and Microsoft and Yahoo and Google will turn over
email messages.

All of those companies have to operate within US law. The controversy here is
related to how BlackBerry is cooperating with less-friendly foreign
governments.

~~~
dec0dedab0de
ahh, so not BES data or any arbitrary data on a consumer phone. That makes
sense then. Maybe there should be an open standard for data requests, and
transparency, and if you get caught breaking it you get removed from DNS and
BGP.

------
jugbee
Man... I literally bought my PRIV just last week due to verified boot,
hardware encryption and now i get this?

Selling my almost brand new PRIV. 450$. PM

~~~
arm
Good luck getting someone _here_ to pay $450 for it though…

------
Aoyagi
And I've just realised what PRIV is supposed to refer to. Oh well, the device
seemed so appealing....

------
b01t
Google and Apple are part of PRISM, and Blackberry too now.. what options do
we have left? Cyanogenmod?

~~~
duckingtest
Chinese smartphones. They may or may not have backdoors in them, but then
China state surveillance doesn't care about you, unless you work on a missile
research or something similar.

------
tclancy
That's one way to differentiate yourself from the competition.

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batz
Their best hope is to get their assets acquired by a big defense contractor
like MOT, BAE, etc, to supply the niche of north american public sector mobile
devices.

Like a Canadian hockey team Blackberry insists they invented the game, but
every time they get to the playoffs they choke because they're just so
overwhelmed at being invited.

Any interesting engineering they might have done in the past is dwarfed by
their farcical inability to turn it into something people actually wanted.

It's just all so....canadian.

~~~
patrickbolle
Great analogy. Hits home as a Leafs fan from Kitchener.

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Aelinsaar
BlackBerry is a ship that can't sink fast enough. I only feel for the people
who will lose their jobs (those not in upper management at least).

~~~
imchillyb
> ... those not in upper management ...

Well, you did say people not monsters.

