BlackBerry CEO responds to allegations about masterkey possession Canadian police

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The CEO of BlackBerry John Chen has responded in a blog to the reports about the Canadian police who are said to be in possession of a BlackBerry master key. The key allowed the police to read all pin-to-pin messages between devices.

In the blog post, the CEO points to ‘doing the right thing’ in difficult situations. There has been a lot of criticism in the past week after it was revealed that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, possessed the key and was able to decipher messages from both suspects and ordinary people.

In ‘doing the right thing’, Chen makes references to companies that do not want to cooperate with lawful access requests. In it he refers to earlier statements of himself. Chen thinks “we’ll be in a dark place if companies put their reputations above those of the public good.”

Then Chen elaborates on the reasons for his post, the recent disclosure of the PIN-to-Pin messaging service’s security key being in possession of the RCMP. He believes the company’s ethical principles were good because it eventually led to the collapse of a large criminal organization.

The BlackBerry Enterprise Service BES was never involved, according to the CEO. According to him, BES remains impenetrable without back doors. Chen maintains that the BES platform is the most secure platform for mobile communication.

Finally, Chen refers to BlackBerry’s refusal to allow Pakistani security services access to the BES servers. With that, Chen thinks BlackBerry makes its principles very clear, even under pressure.

BlackBerry pin-to-pin communication

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