Note: Since this post, the Government of Pakistan has notified
BlackBerry that it has extended its shutdown order from November 30 to
December 30. BlackBerry will delay its exit from the Pakistan market
until then.
After November 30, BlackBerry will no longer operate in Pakistan.
While we regret leaving this important market and our valued customers
there, remaining in Pakistan would have meant forfeiting our commitment
to protect our users’ privacy. That is a compromise we are not willing
to make.
In July, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority notified the
country’s mobile phone operators that BlackBerry’s BES servers would no
longer be allowed to operate in the country starting in December “for
security reasons.”
The truth is that the Pakistani government wanted the ability to
monitor all BlackBerry Enterprise Service traffic in the country,
including every BES e-mail and BES BBM message. But BlackBerry will not
comply with that sort of directive. As we have said many times, we do
not support “back doors” granting open access to our customers’
information and have never done this anywhere in the world.
Pakistan’s demand was not a question of public safety; we are more
than happy to assist law enforcement agencies in investigations of
criminal activity. Rather, Pakistan was essentially demanding unfettered
access to all of our BES customers’ information. The privacy of our
customers is paramount to BlackBerry, and we will not compromise that
principle.
What we said in July when rumors of Pakistan’s decision started to
swirl remains true today: “BlackBerry provides the world’s most secure
communications platform to government, military and enterprise
customers. Protecting that security is paramount to our mission. While
we recognize the need to cooperate with lawful government investigative
requests of criminal activity, we have never permitted wholesale access
to our BES servers.”
BlackBerry’s focus will remain on protecting corporate, government
and military communications throughout the world, including in South
Asia and the Middle East, wherever our technology operates. 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.
About Marty Beard
Marty Beard (MartyJBeard @ Twitter) is Chief Operating Officer
at BlackBerry. He is responsible for leading cross-functional
operations, including Marketing, Pricing, Application Partnering,
Manufacturing & Supply, Customer Care and Quality. He is also
responsible for instituting best practices and processes across the
organization to ensure operational excellence. Marty previously served
as Chairman and CEO of cloud customer service applications provider,
LiveOps, Inc. He was also President of Sybase 365, a mobile messaging
and mobile commerce services unit of Sybase Inc., and Vice President for
e-commerce at Oracle Corp. He has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and an MBA
from Georgetown University.
