I must say my opinion of RIM just went from “I don’t really care” to “Wow talk about rock solid.” A United Arab Emirate telecom company call Etisalat posted an over the air update for its Blackberry users. Emirate said, “upgrades were required for service enhancements”. It turned out the update installed surveillance software produced by SS8 in California…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8161190.stm
From the article…
The update has now been identified as an application developed by American firm SS8. The California-based company describes itself as a provider of “lawful electronic intercept and surveillance solutions”.
Yup I’m sure the freedom loving rulers of the UAE wanted this only for lawful reasons. Wait a minute the UAE isn’t comprised of freedom loving rulers? They probably wanted this software to spy on its citizens? But if you’re not doing anything illegal you have nothing to hide hence why would you be uncomfortable with your government spying on you? Oh that’s right people like privacy.
Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry, stated they did not authorize or develop any such update. To alleviate this issue they have released a removal too which can be found here…
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/ataglance/security/regappremover.jsp?CPID=OTC-REGAPPREMOVER
I say good on Research in Motion.