The UAE and the Saudis have made a lot of news earlier this week with their steps to choke 
BlackBerry data services in their countries.
Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry, came up with a particularly clever system for securing their devices. CEOs, as it turns out, don’t like the idea of anyone reading their email.
So all the BlackBerry data is encrypted. Actually, it’s often encrypted twice; if a company has a special server on their own networks they can wrap it in another layer that even RIM can’t get access to.
National security services haaaate this.
So they’re all demanding that RIM open up its services for monitoring. They will all reach some form of accommodation – RIM wants to make money, and given their economic problems Dubai can hardly continue to pose as an international Hub of High Finance and Business if the eliminate the tool that is the very embodiment of that ethos.
Security services are going to have a lot to worry about in the future; BlackBerry points to what is likely to be the future of the Internet: end to end wall to wall encryption.
This is referred to as the “Darknet” scenario. It would be impossible for ISPs, governments, or hackers to see the contents of the traffic going through their networks.
This used to be computationally prohibitive – sealing something in a nigh-uncrackable envelope isn’t easy – but as you may have noticed computers have improved a bit over time.
For most consumers there wouldn’t be any reason not to encrypt everything; I certainly have no incentive to let anyone watch what I’m doing.
This of course gives anyone in charge of controlling what people do, monitoring what they watch, or learning with whom they interact the willies. It’s inevitable in open societies, I believe – which will make the contrasts with the authoritarian world all the starker. In this case my money – in the long run – is on the side of the good guys. Or, here, the guys with money.
After all, whether in New York or Shanghai no CEO wants rivals reading their email.
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