Arabs ban BlackBerry? No, not exactly.

By Richi Jennings. August 2, 2010.

You may have read that Research In Motion is in trouble with authorities in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. It's said that certain BlackBerry services, including email, will be banned unless the governments are allowed to spy on messages going back and forth.

Banned? Seriously? Well, let's take a closer look, in The Long View.

It's important to note that this isn't just about email, it's also about the BlackBerry Messenger functionality. BBM is a private instant messaging service run by RIM, where BlackBerry users can send IMs to other users in their circle. Both BBM and the email service work over an encrypted internet path to RIM's Canadian data centers.

Saudi Arabia is complaining about BBM; the U.A.E. is complaining mainly about BBM and email.

This looks to me like the same dance as happened in India recently. Saying the country will ban BlackBerrys is purely a negotiating position. No more; no less.

In a month or two, it'll be revealed that RIM has agreed a compromise that allows these governments to undertake surveillance of its citizens. The compromise is unlikely to involve siting RIM servers outside of Canada. It's more likely to see RIM agreeing to cooperate with specific investigations.

For example, a state may say, "We are investigating this crime, please give us all the data relevant to this BB device between these dates."

This happens in just about every country, including the U.S. The key aspect from RIM's position is to agree the level of government authority that's required for RIM to release this information. For example, a court order would be nice: but in some states, there's a question-mark over just what would constitute adequate legal justification to invade RIM customers' privacy.

The process needs to be thrashed out separately in each individual jurisdiction; the position is less clear in some states than in others.

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