On The Call: RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie addresses threat to BlackBerry services

On The Call: RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie

NEW YORK — BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. on Thursday announced second-quarter results. During a call with analysts, co-CEO Jim Balsillie addressed threats by India, the United Arab Emirates and other countries to ban BlackBerry services over data security.

“On the topic of lawful access, RIM is continuing discussions with governments and carriers in India and the UAE, and they believe we have made good progress in those discussions. The details of such discussions are, of course, confidential but I’m optimistic that a positive and constructive outcome can be achieved that addresses the regulatory requirements of government and the security and privacy needs of corporations and consumers.

“I know that there are lots of contradictory rumors and theories on this topic, and it is unfortunately inevitable given the circumstances. It’s the type of subject that draws a lot of interest and commentary from a lot of people, many of whom are simply speculating, and some of whom are frankly driven by their own agendas and so it should be no surprise that there is a lot of misleading and inaccurate information out there.

“With that in mind, I will reiterate that RIM continues to engage in constructive discussions in the matter and RIM has consistently and publicly communicated its principles in dealing with the matter. We’ve made it clear that we are respectful of government needs and fully cooperating to comply with lawful requirements on an industry standard basis, but we cannot compromise the security architecture of the BlackBerry enterprise solution.

“The (company) utilizes end-to-end encryption and RIM simply has no ability to read the encrypted information. RIM has no master key or backdoor key to allow access, and the location of RIM’s infrastructure has no impact on the security architecture. The end-to-end encryption is a fundamental part of the system design and we know it is a fundamentally important security feature for our enterprise customers around the world since they legitimately need to protect their confidential corporate information. And this is a core underpinning of why we have over 250,000 BlackBerry enterprise servers installed and operational around the world today.”