BlackBerry Ltd Declined Due To Its Encryption: Former NSA Attorney

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BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) lost market share in the last few years because of its secure products that could not be cracked, said a former top lawyer to the NSA, who was speaking to audience in Ireland this week. Stewart Baker served as the NSA general counsel from 1992 to 1994.

Different theory on BlackBerry decline

Those who deal with confidential data typically prefer Blackberry over other unsecured devices and use its propriety messaging program to send messages within a closed group over an encrypted protocol.

Although companies such as Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) are making efforts to make their phones more secure, Baker turned the tables by saying that BlackBerry lost a lot of market share because of its high security. The theory from Stewart Baker, the former general counsel at the National Security Agency (NSA) says that BlackBerry wasn’t just the victim of fierce competition coming from the likes of Apple’s iPhone and Android phones running Google’s innovative operating system. He says that by encrypting user data, Blackberry limited its business in countries that demand oversight of communication data, such as India, China, Russia and others.

Apple and Google also warned

Baker also warned other companies to reconsider before offering any high-security devices to consumers. Baker told the Guardian, BlackBerry pioneered the same business model that Google and Apple are doing now.” He added that the strategy did not work well for Blackberry after few years, and by doing so the company curtailed its own ability to sell.

According to a report from RT, both Apple and Google are working to make their devices more secure, but the intelligence agencies are arguing that it will contain their ability of cracking down on the terrorism and other crimes.

Baker believe that the efforts made by Apple and Google to offer a secure smartphone are misguided. He said that technology companies are doing big things to keep a safe distance from NSA, which looks good for their image, but is not in the best interests of national security.

Apparently the inalienable rights given to all citizens by the U.S. constitution mean nothing to totally blindered zealots like Baker. He’s willing to throw those precious rights away in a futile witch hunt for terrorists he creates with his own greedy and short-sighted foreign policy. True Americans have to stand up to this ridiculous scaremongering and protect themselves from the police state Baker and his colleagues are trying to create.

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