Ars Technica:
John Chen, the Blackberry chairman and CEO, is ripping Apple’s position that granting the authorities access to a suspected criminal’s mobile device would “tarnish” the iPhone maker’s image.
“We are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good. At BlackBerry, we understand, arguably more than any other large tech company, the importance of our privacy commitment to product success and brand value: privacy and security form the crux of everything we do. However, our privacy commitment does not extend to criminals,” Chen wrote in a blog post titled “The encryption Debate: a Way Forward.”
Well, if anyone would know a thing or two about a tarnished brand, it would be the CEO of Blackberry. I’d rather have Apple making sure law enforcement requests have a “clear legal authority” rather than Chen’s plan to roll over whenever the government wants to “help us be safe”.
does this guy understand that its not a special privilege granted to criminals, its the same privacy that protects ME and ALL customers…the encryption is secure, period.
what a clown.
this is the same CEO (hard to keep track over there) who kept referring to his new Android handset as running “Google”.
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/28/chen-show
And that is why the CEO of Blackberry has turned over copies of all of the keys to all of the physical locks in his life to his local government. His front door lock, his car lock, his safety-deposit lock, his diary lock, his footlocker lock, his gym locker lock, his suitcase lock. He gave copies of all of those keys to his local government because he may one day turn out to be a criminal, and the government may want to access those locks.
And then a government worker who had run up tens of thousands of dollars in gambling debts made copies of all of the Blackberry CEO’s keys and gave them to organized crime to pay off his gambling debts.
With encryption, the above example actually gets worse, because it would be a private Blackberry worker that turns over the keys to organized crime, not a public government worker, and the Blackberry worker could turn over the keys via the Internet rather than having to physically hand them over.
See how secure a Blackberry is? Not secure at all. The fact that Blackberry has a storehouse of its customers keys means that your data is only as secure as Blackberry chooses to keep it. And Blackberry doesn’t care about your data like you do. Especially when their CEO says that the only reason to keep something secret is if you are a criminal, which is not even close to true. You could be a writer who is keeping an in-progress manuscript secret from competitors or even your own fans who want a sneak peek. You could be keeping the fact that you are gay secret from your employer because it is legal for them to fire you for that in your locale. You could be an investigator who is putting together a fraud case against the CEO of Blackberry and don’t want him to know.
And maybe Blackberry workers don’t even need gambling debts to be desperate. Maybe they think they will be out of a job soon and need a nest egg just because Blackberry is so incompetent. So you are having a fire sale of customer keys to organized crime.
Apple employees can’t do that, because there is no storehouse of keys. You, the user have the key to your locks. Just like it is with your house key.
Thank-you Blackberry CEO for reminding us all why we don’t trust you with our private data.
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Ahem.. shame on Tim Cook for personally writing code specifically to allow terrorists to evade law enforcement, while Chen has magically created software that not only allows law enforcement free access but ALSO determines before messy things like a trial, that anyone law enforcement wants to spy on is a criminal. Since it’s clear post Snowden that EVERYONE IN THE US has been the target of government surveillance, well then – thanks for making everyone who’s left off that list of everyone in the US feel more “safe”.
What a moron.
Mr. Chen’s words are utter horseshit. Merely insinuating that his company would roll over to governmental surveillance seems to me to be tantamount to yet another nail in his corporate coffin.
When encryption is illegal, only criminals will have encryption.
This is why we we here in America we have the Fifth Admendment! So Apple is basically saying “show me them warrent” and the CEO of Blackberry is saying “take it all” because it is the far reaching government! Do whom do you trust?
However, our privacy commitment does not extend to criminals
There are, of course, some huge problems there:
1) Any crypto scheme that BB (or Apple) can decode means that anyone getting their keys can also decode it; it’s another point of failure and a single immensely high value target for either independent or state-funded black-hats. In other words, it’s automatically less trust worthy, even assuming BB (or Apple) acts in perfect good faith.
2) “Criminals” means what? If, oh, Russia or China assures RIM that person X is “honest and for reals a criminal, we pinky swear”, will that be enough?
Or only if a NATO/EU power does it? Trust all of them to play nice when political forces are at play? I don’t.
(JohnDoey nails #1 in a wordier, if more emphatic way. When only the data’s owner has the key, it’s secure [from anything short of “them writing it down and losing it” or “physical threats against them or theirs for revealing it” – nothing can stop that].
When anyone else does, it’s only as secure as the weakest link in the chain …. which in the worst case is “anyone with access who can take a remarkably low bribe”, or “anyone who can beat the weakest link of security guarding it”.
No, no, no.
And I say this as someone who isn’t a crypto-zealot; I can’t even be bothered to use FileVault locally!)
Well, RIM is a Canadian company…
BlackBerry’s enterprise customers have control over their own encryption keys on BlackBerry services. This means that corporations and governments have control over their own privacy and not even BlackBerry could decrypt their data following a court order.
Apple thinks that privacy should be in the hands of the individual. BlackBerry thinks that privacy should only be available to corporations and governments.
Reminds me of Zappa’s old phrase… There’s a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
Ironically, some of the world’s biggest criminals and mass murderers are exactly who BB caters to (financial institutes, rogue governments etc.). The Boston bombers and the jerks in Paris were well known extremists, there were warnings, no-fly entries and even clear threats reported by foreign intelligence – and still they could not stop anything. Some of them had their hate openly on their FB pages – just “friend” them and you can read it – no backdoor required. Surveillance and tapping have not stopped a single thing yet.
Surveillance and tapping have likely stopped many instances of damage to individuals. However, as you suggest, there are many instances where the indicators are out in public for those with the interest to discover. The claim that governments need a back-door to everyone’s conversations is the real problem. The next Tim McVeigh will not be found by review of encrypted conversations, but by seeing very public declarations.
Pinky swear. Ha ha ha! I just choked on my coffee – thanks a lot! Totally agree, by the way.
Hey John, we all know we are indeed in a “dark place.” We’ve got psycho assholes killing people for a variety of lame reasons and other psycho assholes spending lots of money to keep the purchase of military-style weapons and huge amounts of ammunition totally legal (and profitable) and other psycho assholes using the dark place we’re in as an excuse to expand the government surveillence despite the fact that there’d be no real control over which government, or indeed anyone else, does that surveillence and finally we got desperate CEOs trying to save their bacon by getting a little free publicitiy for their has-been totally irrelevant company.
Yeah, we’re in a dark place, but it has NOTHING to do with a company afraid for their reputation.
Chen’s a placeholder CEO. I doubt he even knows how to use any of his own company’s phones very well.
It looks like you can add anyone who uses Juniper Networks products can now be added to Chen’s list of criminals…
http://recode.net/2015/12/18/who-hid-a-secret-back-door-in-junipers-security-gear/