Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The adoption of modern technologies in the UAE has been as rapid as the country’s economic growth, presenting big challenges for local laws and social norms.

In the Emirates, the internet is monitored and sexual or political content deemed inappropriate is blocked.

Skype’s voice-over-IP web site, which allows people to make international calls over the internet, has also been blocked, leaving the duopoly of state-owned telcos Etisalat and du to hold the market.

Now the UAE seems to have turned its attention to the services of Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry, the popular business mobile phone.

“There has been a trend in the region where regulators or government are becoming concerned about Blackberry,” Matt Reed, Middle East and Africa senior analyst at Informa Telecoms, told 7DAYS.

The UAE’s Telecoms Regulatory Authority announced on Sunday that BlackBerries could pose a threat to national security.
“Currently, BlackBerry operates beyond the jurisdiction of national legislation, since it is the only device operating in the UAE that immediately exports its data offshore and is managed by a foreign, commercial organisation,” the TRA said. 

“As a result of how BlackBerry data is managed and stored, in their current form, certain BlackBerry applications allow people to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial and national security repercussions,” it added.

The announcement raises the possibility that BlackBerry use could be restricted or monitored in the UAE, or even banned.
Unlike other smartphones, BlackBerry data is hosted in RIM’s servers in Canada rather than in the country it is sold in.

In addition, services such as e-mail and instant messaging on the phones use internal encrypted networks.

For both these reasons, their use is much more difficult to monitor and the data they send is not easily intercepted. 

Even if emails or messages are intercepted, RIM’s encryption technology means they are very hard to decipher.

Other data sent through Etisalat and du’s networks is held on servers here and there are no laws governing this information, lawyer Abdullah Al Nasir told 7DAYS.

Police can access it with the cooperation of Etisalat or du and a judge can order the release of phone records or text messages, he added.

The TRA announcement is not the first sign of discomfort with BlackBerry services in the country.

In July last year, Etisalat customers were shocked when a ‘patch’ they downloaded turned out to be a form of spyware.

BlackBerry customers received a text from Etisalat telling them that they would be sent “a performance enhancement patch” to install on their device.

Customers that installed the patch found there was a huge drain on their batteries, prompting a number of examinations that showed it was actually a programme that allowed access to private information on the phone.

However, Informa’s Reed believes it is unlikely that Black-Berries would be completely banned. “Obviously the two providers here... do very well out of BlackBerry,” he said. He added that hosting BlackBerry data in the UAE would probably not be a solution since RIM had refused the same request from Saudi Arabia in March.

The TRA did not say what action it was considering.

“We have been working for a long time to resolve these critical issues, with the objective of finding a solution that safeguards our consumers and operates within the boundaries of UAE law,” it said.