UAE Says Blackberry Encryption Violates Law

The UAE has become the latest Gulf state to wrestle with the Blackberry's proprietary encryption system which cannot be read by governments. It's getting picked up by a lot of media, but some of the headlines are a little misleading, I think. The National has the story here. A BBC version here.

The Saudis and Kuwaitis have wrestled with this issue, too. And as one of the articles notes, Indian intelligence has expressed frustration at its inability to break Blackberry encryption, since the terrorists who attacked Mumbai in 2008 used Blackberries. The encryption has never been broken, and data apparently passes through Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian firm behind Blackberry. The UAE is saying that only Blackberry stores its data offshore, beyond the reach of UAE law.

It's easy to see this as a censorship issue, but mobile telephones are generally fairly easy for governments to snoop on. (I have an Android phone, so I assume Big Brother Google can learn anything it wants about me. But then, they already have pictures of my house.) Blackberry seems to be the exception.

It's Official: Saudis Lift Blackberry Ban

It's been widely reported since Friday's brief outage and then restoration of Blackberry service in Saudi Arabia, but now it's official: Saudi Arabia will allow Blackberry service to continue because it's making progress in negotiations with RIM about using Saudi servers.

Given that the UAE ban isn't set to kick in until October, there's certainly a chance that one will be negotiated too.

I suppose this is good news for Blackberry users, though it adds the potential that Big Brother can gain access to your data, so perhaps not.

UAE Suspending Blackberry; Saudis to Follow

It's not just a threat any more; the UAE is suspending Blackberry E-mail; and browsing services as of October 11, affecting some 500,000 users, and Saudi Arabia says it will follow suit even sooner, banning services by his coming Friday. (Apparently the ban does not extend to voice telephone calls, according to some of rhe reports.) The UAE argues that both the US and UK have legislation requiring that they be given access to calling information in national security cases but that Research in Motion (RIM), which runs Blackberry, has not complied with similar UAE legislation. India has been in negotiations with RIM because Blackberries were reported used by the terrorists who attacked Mumbai, and has threatened to suspend service as well.

Given the role of Dubai as a business, travel and communications hub, I would assume this would be a blow to RIM and that the October 11 date — more than two months out — is a sign that this is an attempt to bring RIM to the negotiating table.Here's Gulf News on the need for providing "alternative services" by October; and here's a survey of pressures on RIM in other countriesj, including reports that RIM agreed to set up a server in China to retain service there.

Latest Dispatches from the Blackberry Wars

In my native Ozarks one sometimes heard of a "blackberry winter," sort of the opposite of an Indian Summer, when things warmed up enough in late winter for the blackberries to bloom early. A different sort of Blackberry winter seemed imminent with yesterday's UAE and Saudi moves against Research in Motion, but now there are reports that RIM has agreed to let India monitor its services, and may have set up a server in China, which may augur well for finding a modus vivendi with the Gulf states. Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, whose ban was to be in effect even sooner, there is talk that ISPs may ignore it for the time being, expecting it to be lifted, and things there seem generally uncertain.

I deplore censorship, but I recognize that sovereign nations have certain rights to monitor potentially dangerous communications; the UAE Ambassador to the US has protested State Department criticism of the ban, noting the US already asserts monitoring rights. As I noted in an earlier posting, I have an Android phone, which means whatever mere nation-states may seek to learn, I'm watched by Google and therefore have no expectations of privacy. But RIM seems to really annoy certain countries for its encryption methods.

Gulf Blackberry Blackout to Begin Today, Maybe

Blackberries will go black either today or tomorrow in Saudi Arabia. (I can't explzain the discrepancy, but most sources make it today.) It doesn't sound as if Research im Motion (RIM) is willing to negotiate, at least in their Western public statements emphasizing everyone on the Internet uses encryption, but perhaps there's still room for a deal, since Saudi Gazette was expecting one as of Thursday night, and other Saudi sources seem optimistic.

Elsewhere, the UAE is still planning its cutoff in October. Lebsnon is now talking about joining the rush. Kuwait has already looked at the issue.

Bahrain is resisting: not only are they saying they won't ban the Blackberry, but the Crown Prince himself is Tweeting that "Decision to stop it is ignorant,short sighted and unenforceable."

I somehow can't see the key business centers of the Gulf — Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Saudi Arabia — simply shutting down one of the region's key networks, and one that is quite popular in the Gulf. I'm guessing it's a negotiating ploy, a game of "chicken," where both cars drive at each other head on to see who flinches. But it's an intriguing debate.

Emiratis Will Keep Their Blackberries

The UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, which had threatened to cut service to Blackberries on October 10, has announced that Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian firm behind Blackberry, is now in compliance with UAE requirements and that Emiratis will be able to continue using their Blackberries.

The UAE set the October deadline last summer when the Saudis were threatening to shut down Blackberry service (see earlier posts here).

Though the Emiratis get to keep their Blackberries, they presumably understand that the government may be reading their mail now.

Saudi Blackberry Blackout Only Lasted Four Hours?

Saudi Blackberries did indeed cease functioning today — for four hours. Then the handsets started working again. Some reports suggested the ban would start at midnight. There have also been reports that the Saudis and Research in Motion (RIM) were near some sort of deal.

I'm signing off for the weekend; may all your Blackberries continue to work.

Keeping Up With Technology

Saudi Arabia's Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (AKA the religious police) are on to the emerging moral dangers posed by the Blackberry.

I will leave you to provide your own comments.

Wait till they figure out IPhone apps.

What Did Steve Jobs Know and When Did He Know It?

Hmm . . .

With the threat of the Blackberry ban, the UAE is selling out of IPhones and IPads . . .

Wael Ghonim: 15 Minutes of Fame, or Something More?

If you live on this planet and do not spend all your time reading only celebrity gossip and watching misnamed "reality" TV shows — and I assume all my blog readers would by definition fall within a Venn diagram of those two conditions — you probably heard about Wael Ghonim yesterday or Monday. If you follow Egypt closely you probably heard about him sooner.

Wael Ghonim is Google's Middle East marketing manager, based in Dubai. He's an Internet geek (after all, he works for Google) and he's Egyptian. He went back to Egypt for the revolt. On January 27 he posted from his active Twitter (#Ghonim) account the post:

"Pray for #Egypt. Very worried as it seems that government is planning a war crime tomorrow against people. We are all ready to die #Jan25 2:07 PM Jan 27th via Twitter for BlackBerry®

Then he went silent. He became a cause celèbre for many of the Facebook and Twitter folks in Tahrir. He was finally released on Monday, after 11 days in captivity. At that point it was revealed that he was actually the mysterious ElShaheed who set up the "We Are All Khaled Said" site on Facebook, which became the forum for organizing the revolt. The English version has 55,000 Facebook friends. The Arabic version has 600,000. Khaled Said is the young Aleandrian who died last year after being arrested leaving an Internet cafe, and later turned up beaten to death.

His Facebook page lists "People Who Inspire Wael" as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs and Mohamed ElBaradei. As revolutionaries go, well, I don't think Lenin or Mao listed three of the richest men in the world as three of their four role models. But then, 21st century revolutions may not be 20th century revolutions.

He himself has been very modest in his public pronouncements. Yet somehow, Wael Ghonim is being touted by the international media as the new face of the Egyptian revolution, which has lacked an identifiable face so far. I've seen reports on him on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, ABC, and NBC. Sorry, I haven't watched CBS or Fox, but it looks like he's the flavor of the week. This Time article is typical of the genre.

I can see three possible interpretations of this sudden fame:

1. He is emerging as a real revolutionary leader.
2. He's proving Andy Warhol's forecast that in the future, everyone will have 15 minutes of fame.
3. He's proof that Google is planning to take over the world. (They have pictures of your house!)

While I personally lean towards number 3, in the interest of not sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I think we should discuss one and two.

One reason he's under the spotlight is that both his Twitter followers and Google (guess which has more money?) worked hard to figure out where he went when he disappeared. But when he came out he gave a moving press conference in which he choked up when he learned the (official, no doubt far too low) death toll. He also insisted over and over that he wasn't a hero; the demonstrators were. Tuesday he showed up in Tahrir Square and spoke to the crowds, and posed with Khaled Said's mother, in the symbolic photo of the day. (Left.)

Is he real, or just having his 15 minutes? We'll see. He's urging Egyptians abroad to come home, as he did. (He said earlier that if he wasn't serious he'd be back at his swimming pool in his house in Dubai.) But is he just a computer geek or can he rally the crowds? We don't know yet. He was a big hit in Tahrir yesterday. But he's young, lives outside Egypt, and while I think he had the fire of a revolutionary, I can't speak for his public charisma. The media keeps looking for faces: ElBaradei has capitalized a bit on this, he's not charismatic enough for the young rebels. Is Ghonim? He's shrewd, a media guy and a social networking guy, and the center of attention. But does anyone really know him yet? Even I could write the government propaganda against him: he lives in Dubai (gross and offensive wealth: mentioned himself that he has a swimming pool: do you?), is an expatriate who came home for the revolt (not really one of us/possible foreign agent), is a master of social media (subversive, helping the outside world undermine Egypt with online lies), and some reports say he has an American wife (horrors). But if he's got a good enough media presence — that's still not clear — he could have a real role to play. But he's already played a major one with his "We Are All Khaled Said" post.

Here's Ghonim's first interview on Egypt's Dream TV. If you don't know Arabic and don't see a "CC" on the lower tray, click through to YouTube and watch it there, since the "CC" button (lower right, on the left) brings up the English closed-captioning, and while the translation's a bit rough, it's available.

No, Prime Minister

My brief here is the Middle East, and I'm not going to involve myself in any lengthy analysis of events elsewhere. Like anyone who loves London, I'm distressed, alarmed, and angered by the anarchy in London in the past few days. But I have no comments on the politics of the issue. But yesterday Prime Minister David Cameron suggested that it may be necessary to put restrictions on Twitter, Facebook, and Blackberry Messenger posts, in order to limit the ability of the bad guys to plan new looting attacks.

No, Prime Minister. I know the UK doesn't have the First Amendment with its protections of freedom of assembly and expression, but somewhere between the Field of Runnymede in 1215 and Fleet Street today, it has developed a tradition of free expression. Yes, there are limits. Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater and all that. But don't shut down or control media most people are using innocently. Then you start to look like you're rolling down that slippery slope towards Syria on July 3:

or towards Egypt on January 27:

 I know,of course, you aren't suggesting that. But the country that wrote Magna Carta is also the country that invented the Court of Star Chamber, and even the US and its sacred First Amendment has been diddling at the margins in the name of counter-terrorism. I don't like tampering with the freedom of social networks, at least until the bombs are falling on Pearl Harbor.

Let me clarify that I have no qualms about the idea of using Facebook and Twitter posts to prosecute somebody. Monitor them, sure. (Of course, they're monitoring you. It's the Internet, a relatively open system.) Use their posts to prosecute them: fine. Did they really think that posts on a semi-public network would not be accessible to the authorities? Well, Duh. If they preach rebellion, go after them. If they advocate violence, there are laws against that.

My problem is the idea that you might need to shut down or restrict non-inciting but dissident speech, or that these laws could be used to read everybody's E-mail, or censor Twitter.

Enforce the laws, but let's think seriously before we advocate scrapping some of our most ancient traditions. Ben Franklin said something like, those who give up fundamental freedoms for a little temporary security deserve neither freedom nor security.  Britain, "Mother of the Free," deserves both. Don't go there, Mr. Cameron.