Tag archive: United Arab Emirates

Canada's Research in Motion has been under an increasing amount of pressure from international governments to provide security services with real-time access to encrypted BlackBerry communications. Although RIM has worked with governments to reach compromises—including likely locating BlackBerry servers within the borders of some countries rather than in overseas data centers—RIM has steadfastly maintained there is no major… Read More

RIM's recent international brouhaha over the encrypted messaging services it offers to BlackBerry users all started back in June with the United Arab Emirates saying RIM's offshare data storage services were illegal and would be banned October 11, 2010. It's now October, and the United Arab Emirates' Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has announced (Arabic) will be permitted to continue operating after October 11.… Read More

In an interview published in the Wall Street Journal, (subscription required), the never-shy RIM co-CEO Michael Lazaridis had some choice remarks for countries considering banning BlackBerry services over security and encryption issues. In a nutshell: “If they can't deal with the Internet, they should shut it off.” The interview comes as RIM's BlackBerry service has run afoul of state regulators in the United Arab… Read More

Following a ruling that offshore data storage and messaging services used by BlackBerry devices were illegal, the United Arab Emirates has begun outlining plans to block BlackBerry email, messaging, and Web browsing services in the country starting in October…and the ban will apply to visitors as well as citizens of the UAE. The ban would mean that BlackBerry-using travelers to Dubai—on of the Middle East's busiest travel hubs—would lose… Read More

The United Arab Emirates has declared the Research in Motion's BlackBerry smartphones are a potential threat to national security, because BlackBerry data services and storage operate offshore and outside the jurisdiction of UAE laws. According to the UAE, that means the services are ripe for misuse, with “serious social, judicial, and national security repercussions.” The UAE says the practice also violates a 2007… Read More

Asia Pacific Systems (AP Systems, President Jung Ki-ro) held a commencement ceremony for its geostationary satellite mobile service on April 6, in their office building at Gasan-dong, Seoul. The service is the first commercial service in Korea using a geosynchronous high earth orbit satellite. An AP Systems’ satellite phone costs 924,000 won (US$701.30), and using 50 minutes in a month costs 80,000 won (US$60.50), which is the… Read More

Internet search giant Google has released its 2008 End-of-Year Zeitgeist, noting what was hot worldwide in Internet searches for the year. Unlike search engines like AOL and Yahoo who base their end-of-year summaries mostly on the frequency of terms—hence allowing Britney Spears to rule the search engine listings for years on end—Google bases its Zeitgeist both on frequency and on the novelty of terms. In other words,… Read More

China, North Korea, Burma…they’re places where protest has been crushed. But yesterday people demonstrated against Net censorship in virtual locations from those countries.  Organized by the group Reporters Without Borders, the first Online Free Expression Day invited people to create avatars and take part in demonstrations in virtuallocations where protest would not be allowed in the real world.   In a statement RWB said,… Read More

The International Telecommunications Union head of development Sami al-Murshed has refused to rule out sabotage as the cause of several undersea cable breaks that almost cut off the Middle East from the rest of the Internet in the last few weeks. Speaking to the AFP, al-Murshed while attending a cyber-crime conference in Qatar. “We do not want to preempt the results of ongoing investigations, but we do not rule out that a deliberate… Read More