BlackBerry has announced the closure of its operations in Pakistan and its final withdrawal by December 30. The move came after the Pakistani government asked the smartphone maker to provide free access to its secure BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) servers.
Earlier in July, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority notified operators that BES servers would not be allowed to operate in the country, citing security concerns. BlackBerry, however, maintains that the Pakistani government's requests were not related to public security.
«The truth is that the Pakistani government wanted to have the ability to monitor all traffic of the BlackBerry Enterprise Service in the country, including every BES e‑mail and BES BBM [BlackBerry Messenger] message. But BlackBerry did not comply with this type of directive. As we have said many times, we do not support «backdoors» that allow open access to our customers' information and we have never done so in any other country in the world», wrote in a blog post, BlackBerry COO Marty Beard, announcing the company's decision to exit Pakistan.
The original directive had asked operators to stop BES services by November 30, but the deadline was extended by a month to December 30. As a result, BlackBerry is delaying its withdrawal until the new deadline. The move will affect about 5,000 enterprises that are BES customers in Pakistan.
«The request from Pakistan was not a matter of public safety. We are more than happy to assist law enforcement services in investigations related to criminal activity. On the contrary, Pakistan essentially demanded unrestricted access to all BES information of our customers.», explained Beard.
Although the directive did not include consumer services and BlackBerrys , the company decided to cease all its activities and leave the country.
«Despite the fact that the directive of the Pakistani government targeted only our BES servers, we have decided to withdraw from the market entirely, due to Pakistan's request for open access so it can monitor a significant portion of our customers' communications within its borders. Thus, they left us no choice but to withdraw from the country completely», Beard explained.
This is not the first time a government has asked BlackBerry for access to its servers for “lawful surveillance.” India had made a similar request for real-time access to traffic passing through BlackBerry. The government had made it mandatory for BlackBerry to set up its servers inside the country.
After several rounds of negotiations, BlackBerry set up servers in India and reportedly gave the Indian government the ability to monitor in real time certain consumer services, such as emails and their attachments, as well as whether messages sent via BlackBerry Messenger were delivered and read. Enterprise services were exempted from the regulation.
