A Way Out

It was pretty clear that RIM would concede to the governments claims the only question which kept worrying users when would that happen. And this week the decision has been taken at last. RIM has agreed to give the Saudi government access to some of its files and is currently being tested to allow the Saudi government access to user data.

If the mentioned project works out, the government will avert the ban over Blackberry functionality in the Muslim country. The mentioned decision seems to be the last resort if RIM wants to continue its operations and sales in the country.  As it would hardly be probable that users would be satisfied with limited services of Blackberry if the government limited web and e-mail access as it had promised.  Though, it must be noted, the decision was not welcomed by everybody in the country.

 The whole situation is not that unequivocal as in the society there is no agreement as to how treat the mentioned problem. The conservative part of the society keeps on stating that the government should control the sphere in order to prevent illegal relations between men and women, while liberals are sure that it is intrusion in personal life.

But while Blackberry seems to have found at least some way out when dealing with Saudi authorities to avoid a ban the UAE are planning a sweeping crackdown on BlackBerry data services due in October. However, some other Eastern countries announce they do not  view the impact of encrypted Blackberry services  to be that crucial in resolving security problems and terrorism fighting. For example, Bahrain has no plans to follow its Persian Gulf neighbors  in its banning path.  The company’s representatives stated that taking into account the fact that terrorists may as well use other means of communications, to control Blackberry is not a big achievement and the country’s law enforcement agencies decided they may as well live with it.
The mentioned idea is quite reasonable and it’s quite clear that under the pretext of terrorism fighting some governments want to achieve even stricter control over the everyday activities of their citizens instead of real fighting terror and keeping law and order.