A judge signalled today that he is likely to dismiss a claim that one of the founders of the social networking website, Facebook, stole the idea from fellow students. But the Boston district court judge, Douglas Woodlock, delayed a ruling, saying he needed more information. The case is being brought by a rival social networking website, ConnectU, the owners of which allege that Mark Zuckerberg, 23, who helped set up Facebook, pinched the idea, technology, design and business plan. They were...
France fears the BlackBerry is a threat to its secrets
July 26th, 2007
PARIS: BlackBerry hand-held computers, or “Le BlackBerry” as they are known here, have been called addictive, invasive, tiresome for thumbs - and, now, a threat to French secrets.
That, at least, is the fear of French government defense experts who have advised against their use by top officials, reportedly to avoid snooping by U.S. intelligence agencies and the loss of commercial and other secrets.
“Its not a question of trust,” said a French lawmaker, Pierre Lasbordes. “We are friends with the Americans, the Anglo-Saxons, but its economic war.”
Le Monde broke the story. It described BlackBerry withdrawal among those who have given up their PDAs.
“We feel that we are wasting huge amounts of time, having to relearn how to work in the old way,” the daily quoted a ministry office director as saying.
E-mails sent from BlackBerries pass through servers in the United States and Britain, and France fears that makes the system vulnerable to snooping by the National Security Agency, the ears and eyes of U.S. intelligence, Le Monde reported.
The company that makes BlackBerries, however, denies that such spying is possible.
Lasbordes, commissioned in 2005 by Dominique de Villepin, then the prime minister, to look into such issues, said he had alerted the government about the issue months ago. He said he met with Research In Motion, which makes BlackBerries, to discuss the situation in the course of preparing his report on the security of French information systems.
The Canadian company “admitted that there was a certain fragility in the protection of information when you use the e-mail system” and promised it would be resolved, said Lasbordes, adding, “That was more than a year ago.”
BlackBerries pose “a problem with the protection of information” and “the risks of interception are real,” Alain Juillet, in charge of economic intelligence for the government, told Le Monde.
Research In Motion insisted that BlackBerry e-mails cannot be read by the NSA or other spy organizations. The e-mails are more heavily encrypted than online banking Web sites, Research In Motion said in a written statement.
“No one, including RIM, has the ability to view the content of any data communication sent using the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution,” the company said.
The BlackBerry system has been accredited by security agencies in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Austria and Canada, Research in Motion said, adding that a certification process was under way in the Netherlands and Germany.
In France, a circular on BlackBerries from the General Secretariat for National Defense applies in theory to all ministries, and “its up to everyone to be responsible,” Lasbordes said.
Another official in a major ministry who got rid of his BlackBerry said authorities were looking at other PDAs they could use instead.
The prime ministers office would not confirm that it and the presidential palace were covered by the directive, as Le Monde said. But a spokesman, Sйverin Naudet, cited the General Secretariat for National Defense as saying that no type of PDA was risk-free.
“Its not a problem if youre writing to your mother-in-law,” Lasbordes said. But “one can imagine a minister coming from a meeting of the G-8 or G-7, et cetera, or a meeting in Brussels, and he sends information to his colleagues. It goes via Canada and the United States and thats it, game over.”
Suspicion, however, goes both ways. At a G-8 summit meeting in Germany this month, White House aides were instructed to leave their wireless e-mail devices behind, apparently for fear of snooping.
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