BlackBerry may have a bit of a PR problem on their hands in the form of a CBC News report that says that a specialized group of people in BlackBerry actively handed over user data to police agencies around the world as a matter of course:
CBC News has gained a rare glimpse inside the struggling smartphone maker’s Public Safety Operations team, which at one point numbered 15 people, and has long kept its handling of warrants and police requests for taps on user information confidential.
A number of insiders, none of whom were authorized to speak, say that behind the scenes the company has been actively assisting police in a wide range of high profile investigations
But unlike many other technology companies, which regularly publish transparency reports, it is not clear how many requests BlackBerry receives each year, nor the number of requests it has fulfilled.
Insiders say, for example, that BlackBerry intercepted messages to aid investigators probing the political scandals in Brazil that are dogging suspended President Dilma Rousseff. The company also helped authenticate BBM messages in Major League Baseball’s drug investigation that saw New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez suspended in 2014.
This goes way beyond what they were doing with the RCMP which came to light a few months ago. Here’s why it’s a problem for BlackBerry:
One document obtained by CBC News reveals how the Waterloo, Ont.-based company handles requests for information and co-operates with foreign law enforcement and government agencies, in stark contrast with many other tech companies.
“We were helping law enforcement kick ass,” said one of a number of sources who told CBC News that the company is swamped by requests that come directly from police in dozens of countries.
“Narco trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, crime against children, knowing you are stopping those things … how do you not love doing something like that?” said the insider.
Now I am not naive enough to believe that any data that gets shuffled around the Internet is private. Nor am I naive enough to expect privacy of any sort. But if you’re a company that could hand this data over to a third party, tell me that you do it. That’s all I ask. Apple for example has transparency reports that illustrate how often people ask them for user data. By seeing those reports, I can make an informed decision as to if I want to use your product or not. Plus it mitigates or avoids the possibility that the data that they hand over could be misused in some way. Oh, and just because BlackBerry can help law enforcement agencies “kick ass” doesn’t mean that they should. I have to admit that this really does not pass the smell test and it really casts BlackBerry as a company in a negative light.
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BlackBerry Hands Over User Data To Cops All The Time: CBC News
BlackBerry may have a bit of a PR problem on their hands in the form of a CBC News report that says that a specialized group of people in BlackBerry actively handed over user data to police agencies around the world as a matter of course:
CBC News has gained a rare glimpse inside the struggling smartphone maker’s Public Safety Operations team, which at one point numbered 15 people, and has long kept its handling of warrants and police requests for taps on user information confidential.
A number of insiders, none of whom were authorized to speak, say that behind the scenes the company has been actively assisting police in a wide range of high profile investigations
But unlike many other technology companies, which regularly publish transparency reports, it is not clear how many requests BlackBerry receives each year, nor the number of requests it has fulfilled.
Insiders say, for example, that BlackBerry intercepted messages to aid investigators probing the political scandals in Brazil that are dogging suspended President Dilma Rousseff. The company also helped authenticate BBM messages in Major League Baseball’s drug investigation that saw New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez suspended in 2014.
This goes way beyond what they were doing with the RCMP which came to light a few months ago. Here’s why it’s a problem for BlackBerry:
One document obtained by CBC News reveals how the Waterloo, Ont.-based company handles requests for information and co-operates with foreign law enforcement and government agencies, in stark contrast with many other tech companies.
“We were helping law enforcement kick ass,” said one of a number of sources who told CBC News that the company is swamped by requests that come directly from police in dozens of countries.
“Narco trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, crime against children, knowing you are stopping those things … how do you not love doing something like that?” said the insider.
Now I am not naive enough to believe that any data that gets shuffled around the Internet is private. Nor am I naive enough to expect privacy of any sort. But if you’re a company that could hand this data over to a third party, tell me that you do it. That’s all I ask. Apple for example has transparency reports that illustrate how often people ask them for user data. By seeing those reports, I can make an informed decision as to if I want to use your product or not. Plus it mitigates or avoids the possibility that the data that they hand over could be misused in some way. Oh, and just because BlackBerry can help law enforcement agencies “kick ass” doesn’t mean that they should. I have to admit that this really does not pass the smell test and it really casts BlackBerry as a company in a negative light.
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This entry was posted on June 9, 2016 at 8:51 am and is filed under Commentary with tags BlackBerry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.