BlackBerry CEO Cryptically On Assistance To Canadian Police

BlackBerry CEO John Chen has responded at a news that BlackBerry Canadian police would have the encryption key to the encrypted BlackBerry messages could decrypt. Chen does not want to confirm or deny the report.

Last week Vice Magazine came out with a report showing that Canadian police were able to decrypt encrypted BlackBerry messages. At that BlackBerry did not respond, but last night there appeared a blog posting by Chen . In it he argues that tech companies must meet reasonable court orders to give investigators access to data. He also repeated his earlier statement that it is objectionable as companies put their reputation over the public interest.

He then briefly discusses the case of the Canadian police, but would not say whether the Canadian police indeed received the encryption key. Chen said the only thing is that BlackBerry has held in this case to its own principles. "For BlackBerry, there is a balance of what is right, such as helping in the detection of criminals, and prevent government violate the privacy of citizens. We have found this balance, even though governments have pressured us to our ethical principles change."

NSA Stopped Mass Storage Phone Data

US intelligence NSA has stopped the massive storage of telephone data, so reporting news agency Reuters, CNN and the intercept. In June, President Barack Obama decided to implement various reform measures and to limit the powers of the NSA.

So the Secret Service should not collect unfocused phone records of US citizens. Instead, the NSA will now have to be more focused work, in which first a court order is required, after which telecom operators may be asked to keep phone records of certain people or groups of people for a maximum period of six months.

The measure is a victory for privacy advocates and saw Edward Snowden, who felt that the NSA had this much power to spy on citizens. However, the NSA has asked the court to be allowed to continue using the data stored to date to February 29, 2016 on a limited scale. The judge must still here a judgment on it.