Jamil Mroueh On Why It’s Okay To Control The Blackberry

The Editor In Chief of the Daily Star plays the terrorism card:

[Government who want to control the Blackberry] might seem like the “bad guys” here, but they have legitimate security concerns, and a desire to access information that could help save people from a terror attack. [..] The critics of BlackBerry-induced government measures should remember that while privacy and freedom are important principles, so is national sovereignty. If we’re going to protect a company’s right to keep its secrets safe, we should also protect a country’s right to keep its people safe.

The problem here is not that the governments in question are demanding exceptions for when there’s reasonable suspicion in dangerous individuals. It’s that they want to be able to monitor the communications of anyone they wish, which is what police states are used to doing.

Lebanon is not a police state and if politicians, businessmen and journalists find out that their emails and calls are being snooped on, there will be an outcry. This is why an arrangement with RIM should be similar to that between the US and RIM, where the latter only provides information about particular individuals when official warrants are produced.