Blackberry To Cease Operations In Pakistan Following Government’s Backdoor Demands

The Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry has announced that it will no longer operate in Pakistan, after the government demanded the ability to monitor all BlackBerry Enterprise Service traffic in the country, including every BES e-mail and BES BBM message.

“Although the Pakistani government’s directive was aimed only at our BES servers, we have decided to exit the market altogether, because Pakistan’s demand for open access to monitor a significant swath of our customers’ communications within its borders left us no choice but to exit the country entirely”, Marty Beard, Chief Operating Officer at BlackBerry, said in a blog post.

He said that while the company regrets leaving this important market, staying back would mean forfeiting of its commitment to protect user’s privacy. He added that Blackberry will be “more than happy” to assist law enforcement agencies in investigations of criminal activity, but “Pakistan was essentially demanding unfettered access to all of our BES customers’ information.”

“We do not support “back doors” granting open access to our customers’ information and have never done this anywhere in the world”, Beard said.

BlackBerry was supposed to exit the market on November 30, but the government of Pakistan has extended its shutdown order from November 30 to Dec.30, 2015, it will delay its exit from the Pakistan market until then.