Riyadh (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The block on BlackBerry in Saudi Arabia lasted only a few hours. Yesterday, around noon, the government suspended e-mail, texts and the mobile Internet the services. By evening, however, they had been restored.
On August 1, Riyadh had announced that it would suspend BlackBerry services for security reasons. Data transmitted by the phone, in fact, are stored by servers located in Canada, home of Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the Blackberry, and thus can not be controlled by third parties.
According to the Saudi television Al-Arabiya, Riyadh and RIM have agreed: the servers will be installed in Saudi Arabia allowing authorities to monitor the content of emails and messages.
An anonymous source close the negotiations, says that there is also another possibility: Riyadh will check the information only in cases of a suspected threat to national security.
In recent months, many states - the UAE, Algeria, India, Lebanon, Kuwait, Indonesia - have decided to stop Blackberry services. The agreement reached between Saudi Arabia and Rim, not yet officially confirmed, could also lead to similar demands from other countries. RIM is aware of the problem, so much so that few days ago, a company spokesman said: "We can not accommodate all requests to copy the customer code [to access information]”.