France Bans BlackBerries In Govt. On Fears of Spying 268
DesertBlade writes "French government officials are no longer allowed to use BlackBerries for official correspondence. The reason? Fear that the US government will snoop out French national secrets via RIM's network. From the article: '"The risks of interception are real. It is economic war," daily Le Monde quoted Alain Juillet, in charge of economic intelligence for the government, as saying. With BlackBerries, there is "a problem with the protection of information," he said. Juillet's office confirmed that he spoke to Le Monde but said he would not talk to other reporters. Officials at the presidential Elysee Palace and the prime minister's office were not immediately available for comment. Le Monde said information sent from BlackBerries goes through servers in the United States and Britain, and that France fears that the U.S. National Security Agency can snoop.'"
Pointless demand (Score:2, Interesting)
This from.... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.iht.com/articles/1991/09/14/spy_.php/ [iht.com]
Industrial Espionage (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems rational (Score:5, Interesting)
The real news story would be any government organization, US or foreign, that _WAS_ entrusting valuable national secrets to a third party vendor anywhere. The US isn't the only country with ELINT, and unless you have a network that doesn't require external trust (eg, the encryption is done server side or via a proprietary program that could be compromised) there's every reason NOT to make it easy for someone to profit at your expense.
The minute God crapped out the third cave man, a conspiracy was hatched against one of them. You don't need to be a tin-foil wearing, taxi driving crazypants to know this.
Is RIM really that stupid? (Score:3, Interesting)
an indication of what the French are doing (Score:2, Interesting)
Thieves fear theft, liars fear that others are lying, backstabbers fear backstabbing... and the French fear economic espionage. Hmmmm. I wonder what the French might be up to?
France, of course, knows about this stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
I recall being told never to trust the shredders in French hotel rooms: they may have a scanner. Can't find that online, though.
Re:It's not unreasonable (Score:3, Interesting)
Currently? Why would they have ever trusted them? This time period is little different from the Cold War era. The only serious change is that it is now easier than ever for the Government to automatically spy and have less chance of getting caught.
It's been going on longer than that (Score:5, Interesting)
This was why Australia tried to withdraw from Echelon, and outed the project when we whined. We refused to let them redact sensitive information regarding Australian businesses from the data, and they knew we were using it against them even though we were partners in the project.
Re:It's not unreasonable (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm afraid that the USA makes an easy target for outrage and will always be an easy target.
Spying is necessary. Every nation is looking out for its own self interests. Spying on government entitites is fair game. Spying on your own citizens is not. It is a very fine ethical line but as long as the focus is foreign governments, they are on the right side of that ethical line.
Re:Entirely plausible, even likely. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is RIM really that stupid? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's only true if you audit the entire Blackberry software stack for side-channel information leaks at the machine code level. I refer you to Ken Thompson's classic, Reflections on Trusting Trust. [acm.org] I've actually worked with a vendor that has tools for embedding special kinds of sentinels [arxan.com] in object code, taking an even more direct and undetectable route than Ken did.
They're right to be wary.
--JoeRe:Is RIM really that stupid? (Score:2, Interesting)
France has a very legitimate concern. In fact, I'd be amazed if, given the US's history, RIM wasn't already sending every email that goes through their system to the NSA.
Yes, RIM might be headquartered in Canada, but if being in another country can't stop the US from abducting you and sending you to be tortured, why would that stop them from snooping on RIM's servers?
Re:The French should know a thing or two about spy (Score:3, Interesting)
odd that they seem to be doing a 180 and are now CONCERNED (?) with privacy?
I know they now allow pgp encryption for the citizens, but for a long time, hardware vendors that shipped encryption had to 'worry' about how to deal with the french. very bizarre...
Linux :) (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, imagine if Windows Update pushed a reconnaissance-program to computers based on IP address before beginning other types of warfare. And conveniently I would imagine it would be difficult to detect the early stages of such an attack as Windows itself would no doubt have configured all the necessary permissions (firewall,...) while not reporting payload-activity. Eventually someone would notice that physical and audited network traffic don't match and then the jig-would-be-up. That's when you begin your land assault!
Industrial Espionage in France (Score:4, Interesting)
So when the French are worried about economic espionage, we probably all should be.
Re:Entirely plausible, even likely. (Score:3, Interesting)
20 years ago I would have thought such claims to be paranoid conspiracies. I remember rumours about the existence of ECHELON, and strenuous denials of its existence from my own government (the government of New Zealand) and other involved governments. Then, five or six years ago, the Australians admitted it existed, and that is now an established fact.
So, shouldn't members of the New Zealand governments of the 1970s-80s be held responsible for misleading the public? You would think so, since they built an ECHELON station at Waihopai in New Zealand (I remember lefties at the time correctly identifying its purpose, and being mocked for their troubles).
In fact, the New Zealand government of the time was blameless, because THEY didn't even know. That's right. The New Zealand government allowed a satellite tracking station to be built in our country, and had no idea that it was part of ECHELON. David Lange, the Prime Minister at the time later expressed his disgust when the truth came out (in a book he wrote the forward to). You can read it here
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/sp/sp_f1.htm [fas.org]
So Canadians should be worried. There's a reasonable chance that the Canadian government is being kept in the dark.