beyondbrics

Good news for businessmen in the United Arab Emirates: your BlackBerrys are a little closer to safety.

On Sunday the country’s telecoms regulator warned that the smartphones currently operate “beyond the jurisdiction of national legislation”. Today it rowed back, claiming to have no plans to introduce a ban.

In an interview with Al Arabiyah, a Dubai-based  news channel, an official at the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said that the UAE is “studying all options to regulate the services…but we don’t have plans to stop them.”

Worries over restrictions on BlackBerrys had flared after a TRA statement was reported by the state-run Wam news agency on Sunday:

Currently, Blackberry operates beyond the jurisdiction of national legislation, since it is the only device operating in the UAE that immediately exports its data off-shore and is managed by a foreign, commercial organization.

As a result of how BlackBerry data is managed and stored, in their current form, certain Blackberry applications allow people to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial and national security repercussions.

Like many other countries, we have been working for a long time to resolve these critical issues, with the objective of finding a solution that safeguards our consumers and operates within the boundaries of UAE law.

Still, many BlackBerry-users in the Gulf seem to expect curbs or monitoring to come soon. The region’s governments are known for wanting to control information, partially due to worries over terrorism or money laundering. Some residents remove the batteries from their mobile phones before going into sensitive meetings, in an effort to disconnect any listening devices. Several countries block Skype, a popular voice-over-internet programme, due to the difficulty of tapping the calls.

As the TRA’s Sunday statement states, the key issue is that BlackBerry communications run over internal, encrypted network on remote servers, as designed by manufacturers Research in Motion (RIM). The phone’s instant messaging system, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), seems to be a particular concern, with rumours that the service could be banned altogether.

One private equity executive in the UAE told the FT that the desire to monitor electronic communication was understandable, but warned that an outright ban on BBM would be the wrong way to go:

If you come from a western country then it’s difficult to accept government surveillance of data and voice communication as a fact of life. However, if I’m not mistaken, there seems to be a trend worldwide of governments stepping up monitoring of their citizens, whether it be video, voice or data.

We should respect the fact that the UAE government has a right to protect its citizens but I would urge them to seek a compromise with RIM rather than shutting off the BBM network, which would be damaging to Dubai’s role as a regional hub.

One senior banker in Abu Dhabi said he is concerned that commercially sensitive or personal information could be accessed – in a region where the lines between governments, rulers, officials and the private businesses are often blurred.

This part of the world is very concerned about terrorism, and it’s a legitimate concern. But the worry is that sensitive commercial information could also be mined. All governments spy on their people, but the question is whether the information gets misused.

It’s a plausible defence of discretion, but will it convince the regulators?

Related reading:
UAE spyware group at the cutting edge, FT