The Canadian smartphone maker has confirmed cooperating with the police over a murder case in 2011
Last week, the Canadian police got hold of a master encryption key during its investigation, which allowed the organization to analyze over 1 million messages delivered using BlackBerry Messenger between 2010 and 2012.
It is still unknown how the police organization was able to obtain the key. There have been few speculations saying that the Waterloo, Ontario based business has intentionally handed the master key over to the Canadian law enforcement in order to provide its unconditional assistance to the agency in order to solve a 2011 murder case that involves a Montreal crime organization.
The Chief Executive Officer of the smartphone maker, John Chen said in a blog post today that his firm had collaborated with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) but Mr. Chen didn’t specifically state whether the company was the one to share the encryption key with the law enforcement agency or not.
He said in the blog post, “We have long been clear in our stance that tech businesses as good corporate citizens should comply with reasonable lawful access requests.”
He further added that the time came to test the company’s stance of providing reasonable assistance to the law enforcement agencies when an old case resurfaced into the news. The case was an excellent opportunity for the company to prove its compliance of ethical and corporate principles.
In the end, the case had favorable consequences and it finally ended in taking down a major criminal organization. Regarding the smartphone maker’s assistance, Mr. Chen stated that he could assure about the company being in line with its “lawful access principles.”
The Canadian smartphone maker shared contrasting viewpoints with the rival, Apple. A couple of months ago when the tech giant was summoned by the court to assist the government in writing a software to unlock the iPhone of one of the terrorists, the iPhone maker not only declined to take such action but strongly defended its stance.
BlackBerry is not the first tech business to provide assistance to the agencies in such way. Even Apple has assisted the law enforcement agencies at various occasions. The secrecy adopted by the company in assisting the police force to intrude into the private communications without disclosing anything of the like to the general public and specifically the users of the devices.
Ever since the one-of-a-kind legal battle has been erupted between the most valuable company in the world and the most powerful government on the planet, smartphones users have been cautious about the encryption and security of the data stored in their smartphones. The recent news has thrown negative spotlight on the already declining business of the company.
It is also noteworthy that back in last November, the smartphone maker closed down its business in Pakistan after its government ordered the company to hand it over the access to the company’s servers.
