Blackberry was ordered by the Pakistani government to shutdown its operations in the country by November 30th. Since then, the order has been extended till the 30th of December after which Blackberry will exit the country.
In June, Pakistan Telecommunications Authority notified mobile operators that Blacberry’s BES servers would no longer be allowed to operate in the country starting from December 2015. The reason for this wasn’t clear until now.
Apparently, the Pakistani government had asked for access to monitor all Blackberry Enterprise Service traffic in Pakistan. This would include BES e-mails and BBM messages. Since this would put the customer’s privacy at risk, Blackberry refused to comply. The refusal on Blackberry’s part is what led to the order being released by the government.
Blackberry has stated that while they are always in support of public safety and will help in investigations against criminal activity, this would compromise the privacy of users as a whole and that is something they aren’t willing to put up. In our books, Blackberry is right and while they have said that they will lose a lot of valuable customers, they aren’t willing to overlook their principles.