French Officials Can't Resist Their Crackberries, Even If It Means Giving Secrets To American Spies

from the must...-use...-crackberry dept

Wed, Jun 20th 2007 6:44am — Mike Masnick

We've all heard the RIM Blackberry referred to as a "Crackberry" for its supposedly addictive nature... however, we never thought that it was true that anyone really couldn't do without their Blackberry mobile device. Apparently the French government has banned the devices for certain government officials who might email sensitive information. Since RIM has all emails run through its own servers, some of which reside in the US, the French government is worried (perhaps reasonably so) that American spies are snooping on their sensitive emails. However, apparently many French government officials just can't let go and are still using Blackberry devices on the sly... even if it means sending classified info. What's odd is that various officials say they can't find anything else that works quite like the Blackberry, even though there are more and more solutions that do -- and many of them don't require emails to go through special servers in the US.

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12 Comments

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Joe Smith, 20 Jun 2007 @ 7:23am

"serving" the customer
A similar issue came up with the German Army. You would think that RIM would have established a secure server in Europe by now to serve French and German government clients.
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- Anonymous Coward, 20 Jun 2007 @ 9:24am
  
  Re: "serving" the customer
  Maybe they wanted to, but couldn't afford it after paying off Canadian tech companies who were too incompetent to utilize the technology, and the related legal fees.
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  - Joe Smith, 20 Jun 2007 @ 9:54am
    
    Re: Re:
    Maybe they wanted to, but couldn't afford it after paying off Canadian tech companies who were too incompetent to utilize the technology, and the related legal fees.
    
    NTP was an American company.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 20 Jun 2007 @ 10:36am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Way to miss the point, Joe-Irrelevant-Detail-Smith. If that IS your real name. At least I'm comfortable with my cowardice.
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      - Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2007 @ 10:21pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
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ReallyEvilCanine, 20 Jun 2007 @ 7:48am

Pointless
Apparently the word Echelon has slipped from the collective memory. Airbus' bribery in Saudi Arabia wasn't caught through Crackberry messages.
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PhysicsGuy, 20 Jun 2007 @ 8:53am

of course i am french! why else would i talk with this ridiculous accent?!
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- Chronno S. Trigger, 20 Jun 2007 @ 10:31am
  
  Re:
  We're not French, we're rude. It just sounds better with a French accent.
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ignorant american, 20 Jun 2007 @ 10:57am

Like anyone cares what the French are doing...
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Joe Smith, 20 Jun 2007 @ 12:41pm

chacun a son gout
Way to miss the point, Joe-Irrelevant-Detail-Smith. If that IS your real name. At least I'm comfortable with my cowardice.

And I am comfortable with my alias.
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 20 Jun 2007 @ 9:34pm

Works both ways
That's OK. As I recall, the digital radios that US forces were using in the Iraq invasion were French-made. Remember, this was after the dust-up over the French making it clear they would veto any Security Council resolution to invade Iraq.
So if there's any leaking of important secrets through backdoors in equipment, it probably works both ways. :)
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vicky, 22 Jun 2007 @ 4:33am

Re: works both ways
'So if there's any leaking of important secrets through backdoor' get rid of 'of important secrets'.
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