Waterloo’s Research In Motion is negotiating with Saudi authorities to duck a ban on its BlackBerry messaging services.
According to the Associated Press, the Saudis and RIM have reached a preliminary agreement that would allow the government an unspecified amount of access to user data. The agreement involves a plan that would put a BlackBerry server inside Saudi Arabia.
According to the OpenNet Initiative, a joint project of participating academic institutions dedicated to monitoring and reporting on internet filtering and surveillance practices, Saudi Arabia meets the criteria for the “Substantial” categorization. According to ONI, Saudi Arabia directs all internet traffic through a proxy farm run by the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology.
Saudi Arabia is mainly concerned with “content filtering.” This is done using software by Secure Computing and lists maintained by the Internet Securities Unit. Citizens are also requested to report websites or content that is considered “immoral.” According to ONI, the “most aggressive censorship focused on pornography, drug use, gambling, religious conversion of Muslims, and filtering circumvention tools.”
RIM has not publicly commented on this story. This is partly, in my view, because it symbolizes more capitulation to authorities that censor and regulate content.
Matt Klassen discussed similar capitulation to authorities in the U.A.E. in his August 4 piece. His article also included a link to similar RIM concessions in India, where, according to the Financial Post, “RIM agreed on Tuesday to several concessions with Indian security officials following high-level discussions between RIM executives and the Indian government that took place last week.”
As Klassen touched on, we already know about knuckling under by Google in terms of its dealings with Chinese censorship. Is what we’re seeing out of RIM really all that surprising? Hardly. It’s common for Western corporations, telecommunications companies and otherwise, to make adjustments to policy in order to do business in other parts of the world with differing values on personal freedoms and liberties.
What makes the Saudi story interesting is that these negotiations (read: concessions) will likely set the standard for “how technology companies and governments interact around the world.”
“Everybody will be closely monitoring the developments in Saudi Arabia to see if it could set an example and become a template for resolution in the U.A.E. or other countries,” said Simon Simonian, a telecom analyst at Dubai-based investment bank Shuaa Capital.
The developments will also likely become a template for how Canadian and American companies approach business in the Middle East and beyond, as various government authorities observe the proceedings in search of a pattern to illustrate just how many concessions RIM et al. will make for the profound honour of doing business in their nations.
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Written by: Jordan Richardson. www.digitcom.ca >. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com > by: RSS >, Twitter >, Identi.ca >, or Friendfeed >
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I just hope that RIM manages to shed its inhibitions and strike some sort of a similar deal with the Indian government as well. Blackberry is huge in India and a ban would just be the sort of momentum its rivals (iPhone, Android) need to step on RIM’s shoes.