RIM's BlackBerry blog hacked after it cooperates with police over London riots
RIM's Inside BlackBerry blog was hacked on Tuesday afternoon, after the company declared it would cooperate with UK Police to help bring individuals involved in the London riots to justice.
Context & Ripple Effects
RIM walked into this with its back already against the wall: a BlackBerry program pitched in January as a way to defend its turf, a confirmed non-seasonal decline in smartphone performance reported in late July, and a make-or-break product week — the BlackBerry 7 lineup and the QNX-based Colt both unveiled on August 8. Syndicated coverage shows how wide the riot story travelled, with the Guardian framing BlackBerry Messenger's 'role' in the looting and TechCrunch noting Google group members turning to facial recognition to identify rioters.
The hack itself lands on RIM's own communications channel the same day the company confirmed it will cooperate with UK police on the riots — a direct collision between the privacy reputation that made BBM popular with rioters and the law-enforcement goodwill RIM is courting.
First-order effects
- RIM's Inside BlackBerry blog was compromised on Tuesday afternoon immediately after the cooperation announcement, damaging the company's control of its own narrative at the exact moment it needs to reassure users and regulators.
- RIM now has to serve two masters at once: UK police demanding Messenger data for the riot investigation and a BBM user base whose expectation of encrypted, private messaging was the service's core draw.
Second-order effects
- Other governments watching London get a template for pressing RIM for lawful access to BBM, turning each national request into a negotiation over where RIM draws the line.
- Competitor messaging platforms gain a differentiation opening — any rival that can position itself as resistant to police access can court the privacy-sensitive users BBM's notoriety is unsettling.
Third-order effects
- If RIM continues trading access for regulatory goodwill, the structural promise of carrier-grade encrypted consumer messaging erodes, and 'secure by default' shifts from a product feature to a bargaining chip between platform owners and states.
- The episode foreshadows a broader regime in which consumer communication platforms are treated as de facto instruments of public order, with hacking reprisals becoming a routine cost of cooperation.
The trend: Governments are increasingly demanding lawful access to encrypted consumer messaging, forcing platform makers like RIM to weigh privacy-driven brand equity against regulator relationships.