The popular BlackBerry smartphone is under fire in Saudi Arabia, which is threatening to bring all e-mail and data traffic on BlackBerries to a standstill later this month. The United Arab Emirates plans to do the same in October.

The two countries object to the fact that data transfer to and from Blackberries is so well-encoded that even government intelligence services cannot decipher it.

Misuse
Saudi Arabia and the UAE claim that terrorists and others could misuse the capability of sending encrypted data. They have approached the manufacturer, Canadian company RIM, with a request to be given access to the data traffic.

Dutch trendwatcher and communications expert Vincent Everts doesn't expect this will have much effect:

"Blackberries are generally regarded as extremely secure. The US Defense Department, the CIA, the FBI and politicians all use them. It would not be acceptable to a company like this for some small state in the Middle East to get access using these tactics and start monitoring data traffic."

Control
Acceptable or not, the UAE has announced that BlackBerry e-mail, messaging and web-browsing services will be stopped as of 11 October.

Vincent Everts says this is perfectly easy to achieve:

"That's easily done. They control the internet providers so they just have to push a few buttons here and there and none of the BlackBerries would work anymore. That should produce a huge number of protests. I'd be interested to see what happens if they really do it."

Statement
On Monday RIM issued the following somewhat cryptic statement: "RIM assures its customers that it is committed to continue delivering highly secure and innovative products that satisfy the needs of both customers and governments". It's not clear whether that means they will give in to the demands or not.

It's not known how many BlackBerries there are in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Estimates vary from 900,000 to more than a million. Clearly, as in other parts of the world, the phone is not just a status symbol, it also offers companies and institutions a reliable and secure means of communication.