BlackBerry: We'll Help the FBI, But Not With Backdoors

While Apple publicly struggles with FBI requests that it unlock the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, BlackBerry continues to leave unclear quite how much data it's willing to give to law enforcement.

Asked at a roundtable here at Mobile World Congress about whether it would create back doors for law enforcement, BlackBerry COO Marty Beard pointed to two blog posts that CEO John Chen wrote in December and January, before the most recent controversy erupted.

"There are no backdoors in any BlackBerry devices, and BlackBerry does not store and therefore cannot share BlackBerry device passwords with law enforcement or anyone else," Chen said in a Jan. 16 blog post.

That sounds clear, but the January blog post was a clarification of a December post that left quite a lot of wiggle room. It says that "our privacy commitment does not extend to criminals," and that the company will cooperate with law enforcement requests itself, but will not give law enforcement backdoor access or "government access to our servers."

Beard wouldn't go into many more details here at MWC.

"We almost left Pakistan recently because we were asked to provide a back door which we did not do," Beard said at MWC. "On the other hand, we comply with legal requests where it makes sense, and we've always done that."

Beard declined to say whether BlackBerry would decrypt a fully encrypted Priv phone for the FBI, or even whether that was technically possible.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.

About Our Expert

Sascha Segan

Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

My Experience

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also wrote a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsessed about phones and networks.

My Areas of Expertise

US and Canadian mobile networks
Mobile phones released in the US
iPads, Android tablets, and ebook readers
Mobile hotspots
Big data features such as Fastest Mobile Networks and Best Work-From-Home Cities

The Technology I Use

Being cross-platform is critical for someone in my position. In the US, the mobile world is split pretty cleanly between iOS and Android. So I think it's really important to have Apple, Android and Windows devices all in my daily orbit.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 for work and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro for personal use. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, although I'm probably going to move to an Android foldable. Most of my writing is either in Microsoft OneNote or a free notepad app called Notepad++. Number crunching, which I do often for those big data stories, is via Microsoft Excel, DataGrip for MySQL, and Tableau.

In terms of apps and cloud services, I use both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive heavily, although I also have iCloud because of the three Macs and three iPads in our house. I subscribe to way too many streaming services.

My primary tablet is a 12.9-inch, 2020-model Apple iPad Pro. When I want to read a book, I've got a 2018-model flat-front Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. My home smart speakers run Google Home, and I watch a TCL Roku TV. And Verizon Fios keeps me connected at home.

My first computer was an Atari 800 and my first cell phone was a Qualcomm Thin Phone. I still have very fond feelings about both of them.

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