BlackBerry Ended Operations in Pakistan Over PTA Surveillance Demand

BlackBerry is exiting its operations in Pakistan. After November 30, BlackBerry will no longer operate in Pakistan. This is announced by the Chief Operating Officer at BlackBerry Marty Beard at the BlackBerry Blogs.

COO of BlackBerry Marty Beard expressed his views over existing operations in Pakistan, “While we regret leaving this important market and our valued customers there, remaining in Pakistan would have meant forfeiting our commitment to protect our users’ privacy. That is a compromise we are not willing to make.”

Tweet by BlackBerry

Why #BlackBerry is Exiting Pakistan, by COO @MartyJBeard https://t.co/RGqwA4D1o1 #PrivacyOn #encryption

— BlackBerry (@BlackBerry) November 30, 2015

In July 2015, BlackBerry was notified by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority that by December 2015 the BlackBerry will not be allowed to operate in Pakistan because of ‘security reasons’. After the launch of National Action Plan (NAP), PTA, SBP, NAB and FBR were strictly advised to monitor their data. Aimed at making the NAP effective, PTA advised the mobile operators and cellular companies to provide access to the concern authorities to their customer data. Just like other mobile operators and companies, BlackBerry was notified to give an access to all BlackBerry Enterprise Service traffic in Pakistan including every BES email and BES BBM message. However, BlackBerry refused to comply with that requirements.

Notification by PTA

According to COO Mary Beard, “we refused to comply with the directive of PTA as we said many times that we don’t support ‘back doors’ granting open access to our customers’ information and have never dome this anywhere in the world.”

Commenting over the demands of Pakistani authorities, COO BlackBerry cleared that we were ready to assist law enforcement agencies and were continually doing this. However, the concern authorities were demanding unfettered access to all of BES customers’ information. “Our principal is to not compromise on the privacy of our customers”, he added.

It is not the first time that BlackBerry was notified by any country to grant access. It has been under pressure in many countries to provide access to data on its enterprise services to law enforcement agencies.

In July 2015, on notification by PTA to end operations in 2015 if not comply with the directions of PTA, BlackBerry management replied, “BlackBerry provides the world’s most secure communications platform to the government, military and enterprise customers. Protecting that security is paramount to our mission. While we recognize the need to cooperate with lawful government investigative requests of criminal activity, we have never permitted wholesale access to our BES servers.”

No official response made by the Pakistani Government or PTA officials. However, COO Marty Beard said, “BlackBerry’s focus will remain on protecting corporate, government and military communications throughout the world, including in South Asia and the Middle East, wherever our technology operates. Although the Pakistani government’s directive was aimed only at our BES servers, we have decided to exit the market altogether, because Pakistan’s demand for open access to monitor a significant swath of our customers’ communications within its borders left us no choice but to exit the country entirely.”

Official Source

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