French Officials Can't Resist Their Crackberries, Even If It Means Giving Secrets To American Spies
from the must...-use...-crackberry dept
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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"serving" the customer by Joe Smith on Jun 20th, 2007 @ 7:23am
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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Pointless by ReallyEvilCanine on Jun 20th, 2007 @ 7:48am
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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by PhysicsGuy on Jun 20th, 2007 @ 8:53am
of course i am french! why else would i talk with this ridiculous accent?!
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Re: "serving" the customer by Anonymous Coward on Jun 20th, 2007 @ 9:24am
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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Re: Re: by Joe Smith on Jun 20th, 2007 @ 9:54am
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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Re: by Chronno S. Trigger on Jun 20th, 2007 @ 10:31am
We're not French, we're rude. It just sounds better with a French accent.
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Re: Re: Re: by Anonymous Coward on Jun 20th, 2007 @ 10:36am
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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by ignorant american on Jun 20th, 2007 @ 10:57am
Like anyone cares what the French are doing...
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chacun a son gout by Joe Smith on Jun 20th, 2007 @ 12:41pm
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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Works both ways by Lawrence D'Oliveiro on Jun 20th, 2007 @ 9:34pm
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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Re: works both ways by vicky on Jun 22nd, 2007 @ 4:33am
'So if there's any leaking of important secrets through backdoor' get rid of 'of important secrets'.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: by Anonymous Coward on Jul 30th, 2007 @ 10:21pm
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