14 DAY TRIAL // If you were still looking for a reason why BlackBerry is currently holding an insignificant market share in the mobile business, here you go.
The company’s CEO has just confirmed that they’re ready to break customer encryption should they be asked by the government, basically admitting they are willing to compromise the security of any user at a time when other tech giants are fighting against law enforcement to prevent this from happening.
Unlike Apple, Microsoft, and Google, which themselves have their own legal disputes with the US government, BlackBerry says that it’s willing to try breaking its encryption system and access user data, including here conversations, emails, and other details, when a court order is issued.
“Yep, we’ll do it anytime”
CEO John Chen, however, doesn’t see this as a bad thing, and says that even though BlackBerry is indeed willing to try hacking its users, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’d also be able to do it. But without a doubt, their willingness of breaking encryption system can be used by the US government against other tech giant and, what’s worse, in court where the majority fights against carrying out wiretaps on users.
“Only when the government gives us a court order we will start tracking it. Then the question is: how good is the encryption?” Chen said at the BlackBerry Security Summit in London.
“Today's encryption has got to the point where it's rather difficult, even for ourselves, to break it, to break our own encryption... it's not an easily breakable thing. We will only attempt to do that if we have the right court order. The fact that we will honor the court order doesn't imply we could actually get it done.”
And it doesn’t end here. While most large tech companies provide transparency reports to disclose how many requests they received from governments to access user data, not only that BlackBerry never did it, but they also don’t plan on doing it anytime soon. And the reason is odd, to say the least.
“No one has really asked us for it. We don't really have a policy on whether we will do it or not. Just like every major technology company that deals with telecoms, we obviously have quite a number of requests around the world,” Chen explained.
For what it’s worth, market research firm Gartner puts BlackBerry at 0 percent market share and the company isn’t even included in its mobile reports anymore. And after today’s news, it’s no wonder why.