BlackBerry Pulls Its Operations From Pakistan

BlackBerry has posted a blog post announcing that it is pulling the plug on Pakistan effective today. Why? Here’s a quote:

In July, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority notified the country’s mobile phone operators that BlackBerry’s BES servers would no longer be allowed to operate in the country starting in December “for security reasons.”

The truth is that the Pakistani government wanted the ability to monitor all BlackBerry Enterprise Service traffic in the country, including every BES e-mail and BES BBM message. But BlackBerry will not comply with that sort of directive. As we have said many times, we do not support “back doors” granting open access to our customers’ information and have never done this anywhere in the world.

It is unclear how many customers will be affected by the Pakistan cut-off. But the number cannot be small as this affects both consumer and enterprise customers. But I will say this, from a PR perspective, this sends a clear message that will play well with those who want security and privacy.

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