BlackBerry messaging shut down in Saudi Arabia, users feel early withdrawal pains (update: it's back)
By Tim Stevens 
posted August 6th 2010 10:34AM
posted August 6th 2010 10:34AM
Update: Merely hours later, service is reportedly back. Was it all just a tease? A planned outage blown our of proportion? A false sign of the Apocalypse? Only heaven knows.
@TareG
Why are you belittling/censoring anyone who does not agree with you? Interesting behaviour for the topic of this thread!
BB service is still working on wifi and 3g till this moment.
It's funny how Saudis now are pinging each other every 5 minutes to check on the service.
Honestly, I would be sad if the service is permanently off. My most used app would be the calculator by then.
People there are just gonna have to settle for crappy solid gold, diamond encrusted iphones or android phones
Good for RIM. They have no problem giving access to the US because a court order is needed to snoop. SA just wants unrestricted access to all communications through BBM and that's just wrong.
They took the only thing good BB had.
So when Iran invades their peaceful little kingdom, how is their government going to get the message from Obama to go suck themselves?
stick it to them, rim!
seriously saudi thats just over the top.
...And nothing of value was lost.
Tareg, are you condoning Saudi Arabia's spying on its own citizens? First o all, as othes have pointed out, in the USA, a court order is requied. The USA has some degree of oversight and a separation of powers. In Saudi Arabia, the Wahabi controlled, family run oligopoly thinks that it cannot trust its own citizens, so it controls what they read, look at on line and talk about. Your logic is like a man who beats his children shouting that he should be left alone because his neighbor down the street also beats his children. The fact of the matter is that the Wahabi version of Shaaria is restrictive, and is paternalistic. All that being said, the Ibn-Saud family wants to control both liberal Saudis disatisfied with the current government and the right wing, fundamentalists who want to be even more repressive and theologically dictatorial. Access to books, data and inormation should be unrestricted. With all its failings, the US is a great country because citizens and non-citizens can pratice any religion here and make any political statement freely. There are two mosques, two synagogues, and several churches on my street here in the US where I live. Try to open a synagogue, church, Zorastrian Temple, Buddhist Temple or Bahai Temple in Saudi Arabia. I do hope that RIM does not give in to its principles in the name of profit.
@Dr Yusuf AlKindi
Buddy you won't find a bigger anti-Wahhabi muslim than myself. However, the way the media is spinning this as "just another example of restrictive third world regime" policy is obnoxious.
Again, the same request has already been granted to the US 10 years ago. It needs a "court order" which takes zero seconds thanks to laws set 10 years ago.
@TareG Can a Muslim in America or, for that matter, anyone in America, view pornography, the engadget site, or sites criticizing any and all religions on their Blackberry? YES
Can a Jew, Christian, or a Shi'ia do that in Saudia Arabia on their Blackberry? Hmmmmmm.........
Tareg, you are like a man who when caught stealing from his boss, uses the excuse, "Well, everyone else does it."
You know, once the Sufis were the predominant creative force in the Muslim world. Sufis would never ban the Blackberry.
On another note, I am glad that there are young Saudis who understand that technology is not bad. Once, (during the Golden Age of Spain before 1492 and the Expulsion) the Islamic world was the place where great ideas and developments in engineering and science occured. I am glad there are young Saudis who appreciate their own history and understand that Wahabiism is an abberation, and that Islam does have a forgotten history of technological greatness and intellectual freedom. One day, all the old men will die, and then it will be in the hands of our Saudi enGadget brothers.
Turkey is also investigating the "security issues" at the moment according to the Turkish Newspapers. There is a good chance that the BB Messaging might get banned in Turkey as well.
What do the countries now banning BBM and encrypted internet browsing all have in common (aside from being screwed at various times by the British Empire....)?
@Canucker
Hmm... I know, I know!
They're all countries of the world? US, UK, Canada, SA, UAE, India, Turkey....etc.
Except the first three have not banned or plan to ban BBM - but you know that. This has nothing to do with a religion or a regime, its all about the forms of government in these countries. RIM has not made exceptions for anyone and have said that they will allow any country the same rights to data access as any other. The problem is that that is not good enough for a selection of paranoid governments that believe they have the right to see everything, at their whim.
Welcome to a totalitarian government.
People have no idea how good we have it here.
I must ride camel to next village so government not able to spy on my cell phone conversation.
Blackberry service back in 4 hrs?! That means RIM caved.
BLACKBERRY SERVICE IS NO LONGER SECURE.
DO NOT REPEAT DO NOT USE A BLACKBERRY TO COMMUNICATE SENSITIVE INFORMATION!
ALL BLACKBERRY SERVICE WILL SOON BE COMPROMISED
DESTROY/ERASE ALL SENSITIVE EMAIL!
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
@covcomm
Use VPN for secure transactions. Always take end-to-end encryption.
A totalitarian government doesn`t want you to use the most secure system to communicate (BBS) they want to easily be able to spy on you.
Enterprise everywhere use BBS because it is so secure.
New tag line...
BBS : "So secure it pissed off the Saudi Government"
Did bb cave in to a nice sum of oil money?
hi i was just commenting to inform you if nobody has already that in the update there is a typo it says "blown our of proportion" and is supposed to be blown out of proportion good day,Rick
So how many lashes does one get for sporting a blackberry in the UAE these days?
damn good thing i dont live there i would be going crazy and panicking lol
The sand people are staging a RIM and BlackBerry jihad. Death to those infidels and may the iPhone rise as the Saudi's next smartphone.