This past July, Pakistan's Telecommunications Authority told the country's mobile phone operators that BlackBerry servers are being blocked "for security reasons."
Well, those security concerns that Pakistan took issue with were seemingly never alleviated, as BlackBerry announced Monday that it will no longer operate in the country.
Originally, the company said it would remove its service from Pakistan after Monday, November 30, but has since amended that date to December 30.
"While we regret leaving this important market and our valued customers there, remaining in Pakistan would have meant forfeiting our commitment to protect our users' privacy," Marty Beard, BlackBerry's Chief Operating Officer, said in a company blog. "That is a compromise we are not willing to make."
Beard went on to explain that the Pakistan's government was asking the company for access to monitor all BlackBerry traffic in the country, including each and every email and text message — something BlackBerry wasn't willing to comply on.
"As we have said many times, we do not support 'back doors' granting open access to our customers' information and have never done this anywhere in the world," Beard added.
When first faced with the news in July, BlackBerry released a statement that Beard says holds true today and moving forward for Pakistan, but any country in the world.
In fact, the company's COO believes it so much that he reiterated that July statement in Monday's blog press release.
"BlackBerry provides the world's most secure communications platform to government, military and enterprise customers," the company's original statement about the matter said four months ago. "Protecting that security is paramount to our mission. While we recognize the need to cooperate with lawful government investigative requests of criminal activity, we have never permitted wholesale access to our BES servers."
