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Blackberry has decided to exit Pakistan by the end of 2015 rather than comply with government data retention requests:
Phone-maker Blackberry is to stop operating in Pakistan at the end of 2015 because of government requests to monitor customer data. The Pakistani government wanted to be able to monitor every message and email sent via its phones, it said. In a blogpost, it said it had decided to "exit the market altogether" over the row. It said Pakistan's demand was not to do with public safety but a request for "unfettered access".
In July, Pakistan's Telecommunications Authority told Blackberry the servers underpinning its messaging business would no longer be allowed to operate in the country, citing "security reasons". Marty Beard, chief operating officer at Blackberry, said the "truth" of the matter was Pakistan had wanted to look at all the traffic passing across its messaging servers but the phone company would not "comply with that sort of directive".
"Remaining in Pakistan would have meant forfeiting our commitment to protect our users' privacy. That is a compromise we are not willing to make," wrote Mr Beard.
This led Pakistan to tell Blackberry its servers could no longer operate in the country. Mr Beard said Blackberry did not support "backdoors" that would grant open access to customers' information and had never complied with such a request anywhere in the world.
Maybe they deserve more than a 0.5% share of the global smartphone market.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by scarboni888 on Wednesday December 02 2015, @01:21AM
I bet the shareholders are like, totally happy with yet another BB decision to bleed out.
What are they an NGO now.
Corporations have one duty and one duty only: profit.
Leave the moralizing to others!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @01:28AM
Corporations have one duty and one duty only: profit
Nope, this is just a Oft-repeated false statement treated as fact. [nytimes.com]
(Score: 2) by Lunix Nutcase on Wednesday December 02 2015, @01:32AM
This notion that corporations are only about profit is not based in actual statutory or case law. This was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court just this year. It's just something blindly repeat who have no idea about corporate law. Corporations are perfectly free to "moralize" or pursue causes that don't make profit.
(Score: 4, Touché) by edIII on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:21AM
Then you have absolutely no position to complain when the dystopian world you deserve starts to form around you (or more fully forms). To rephrase your statement:
The means to an end are always completely justifiable as long as there is profit at the end.
That statement is of course false, and deeply sociopathic. Aside from the blind allegiance to the Capitalistic ideals, you also promulgate the idea that corporations are somehow people, and not just people, but people not bound by morality or ethics. Capitalism itself isn't even that sociopathic, just the current implementation out of balance.
Corporations are made of People. People, do, and always will, have moral and ethical obligations to the world, society, and our progeny in general. While it sounds good to say that our idea of Freedom in the U.S. also encompasses the freedom to be a sociopathic greedy fucking butthead (aka The right of Assholery), it follows from simple common sense to not allow the assholes any real influences. It also follows from common sense that a room that is being operated by assholes tends to be not so fun, and inevitably destroys itself, and everyone leaves the room. We've been letting these particular assholes run the U.S for 60 years now into the ground, while also taking the entire world with it via a willfully ignorant rush towards climate change disaster.
No. Corporations have many duties.... because people do. So I'm going to with a complete and total fuck-your-bullshit-concepts since that is exactly the mentality of the Johnson & Johnson executives when faced with the realization of the incomprehensible damage they did to a farm and its family. Corporations only have one duty... to profit....more profits will be made by continuing to harm/kill people instead of stopping.... so we continue to harm/kill until profits say otherwise. That's exactly what Johnson & Johnson executives are guilty of, and it was precisely because they, like you, believed a corporation has only one duty: profit.
Congratulations. In a rather foolish fashion you're supporting a Magic 8 ball for companies that is locked into. "Profits say Yes!" and "Profits say No!". Well don't be too surprised when the question was, "Do we really have to respect Scarboni888 as a human being?", and it answers.... Profits say No!!!!
I can see you saying that I've simply taken things to far and corporations aren't allowed to do such evil things, but my immediate question is how? Ahhh.... regulations right? Which may loosely be considered the "moralization of others", which directly means, "A corporation has many duties, of which, the least is to make a profit". If Exxon executives in the early 80's thought beyond your concept, then maybe, just maybe, they may have been more cautious and cooperative with determining a different outcome for our progeny. The current being: Brutal death of our civilization and another mass extinction event for our planet. Where will your profits be then? In the grand scheme of things, the concept of profit-at-all-costs simply couldn't survive long term any better than a virus.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2015, @03:19AM
Spying is not good for a privacy-oriented company's bottom line.
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