Saudis ban Blackberrys
Yesterday's announcement by the United Arab Emirates that it was planning to block the use of Blackberry phones tells us all something.
The Governments of both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are in the process of banning the use of email and web browsing on Blackberry phones. In both cases the reasons given have been quite clear and unambiguous. BlackBerry phones will be banned because the handsets cannot be monitored by the government. Blackberry handsets automatically send the encrypted data to computer servers outside the two countries.
Last year 145,000 BlackBerry users in the UAE were told by their local operator to install an upgrade "required for service enhancements." Tests by Blackberry's parent company RIM concluded that the upgrade was actually spyware allowing private information on the phones to be monitored. The international trade centre of Dubai is within the UAE and this latest action may well toll the death knell for its recovery following the recession and collapse of property prices last year.
But beyond the Arabian peninsula this story tells us something quite profound. If Blackberrys are being banned because they are 'secure' then all other methods of email and web browsing delivery must be inherently insecure.
Here in the UK, Internet Service Providers are already required to keep details of ‘traffic data’. The government wants to be able to get hold of this data whenever they like. Under their Intercept Modernisation programme is a proposal to record the electronic communications traffic data of the entire UK population in a Government database.
According to the Sunday Times* GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, last year received up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project. With many thousands of emails and texts being sent every second many question the practicality of such a system, but the technical capacity to sift data has grown almost as quickly as the growth in internet traffic.
We should really work on the assumption that all electronic data can be intercepted once it is travelling on the internet. Therefore, in order to keep data secure individuals, organisations and states really need to stop their private data from ever reaching the net in the first place.
If you would like to talk in strict confidentiality about your organisation's data security requirements, call QCC Interscan today.
* http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4882600.ece
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