The Emirates is banning the Blackberry, apparently because, with their internal hardware-based encryption, Canadian servers and user-configured symmetric-key encryption there’s no way for intelligence and internal security agencies to monitor communications that utilize the Blackberry device.

Ok. They can do that – and on the scale of “things despotic governments do in violation of basic human rights” it’s not even a particularly big deal. I mention it because it makes me wonder what they think they are actually accomplishing. Do they not realize that there are lots of Enterprise-Class mobile devices that utilize end-to-end strong encryption? Do they not realize that there are lots of digital communications solutions that do an equally good job of denying them access to communications? They don’t seem to have an opinion about a VPN to an offshore server, or OpenPGP encrypted email, but by golly they’ve got those businessmen and their Blackberries under control!

They HAVE to know that people who want private, encrypted communications will merely apply a different technology solution to that need, and other people, who never thought about it before, will decide that it would be prudent, considering the Government’s clear intention to monitor all private communications, to implement some encryption scheme. I can’t imagine that they have done anything but shoot themselves in the foot.