Engilsh Riots and Your Blackberry

I have a Blackberry phone, in fact I have two of them, one is for work and one is personal. Personally I would be happy using my personal phone for work; but, I wouldn't be able to access my e-mail using my personal phone because we have a secure network.

I don't use my phone to really surf the net, maybe look at the news articles. Blackberries are not real good for the internet in my opinion. The thing about Blackberries is that they are more secure than most other phones utilizing their own servers than just the internet. I don't know all the specifics and it really doesn't matter, the fact is that they are more secure and that is why the President uses one and why they are preferred in business.

I don't know any young people who use Blackberries they tend to prefer Androids or I-Phones. So I have a question, it is about this article.

British Riots Spread on Third Night of Violence - Reuters

Now towards the bottom of the article we find the following:

"Youths appeared to have used a free message service on Blackberry mobile phones to coordinate attacks on shops and police.

Research In Motion, the Canadian manufacturer of Blackberry smartphones, said it would work with British authorities, but gave no details on what information, if any, it would give the police."

So am I to believe that the youths of England prefer Blackberries over I-Phones? Somehow I doubt that very much. Now on August 3rd of the month the BBC reported that 37% of English youths preferred Blackberries. I find that very odd. The BBC also reported that young people preferred to use the phones for Social Networking, Listening to Music and Playing Games.

Now the company that makes Blackberries has said that they were going to work with the police, in what way? The most likely thing is that RIM (Research in Motion) is going to let the police read the messages that were sent and follow them back to the users that sent them. Many Arabian countries have sought to prohibit the use of Blackberries because they couldn't read the texts as easily as they could from other phones.

Personally I think what is going on in England is horrible, the senseless violence and rioting does not benefit anyone and I am a pacifist as I have said before. I also happen to be a big believer in privacy rights and the concept of innocent until proven guilty and due process. I do understand that no cell phone is protected and that it has been decided that we have no expectation of privacy when using them; but, the idea has always been that we should allow the greatest degree of privacy where we can.

Now once the police begin going after the young users in England, the young will stop buying them. Honest businessmen will continue using them as will I, I like my Blackberry and don't use my phone to search the net as I said above. I also don't use apps on my phone to figure out how to find a pizza parlor or anything else. I prefer not to have my phone think for me.

That's all for now, hope you have a great week.