RIM CEO terminates BBC Click interview

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9456798.stm

by sdfx • 15 years ago

85 75 15 years ago

news.bbc.co.uk

tomelders• 15 years ago

Sounds to me like he misunderstood the question and assumed the Beeb were implying there's a serous security issue with the Blackberry device itself, when the question was actually about the "security" concerns of certain countries in which Blackberrys are sold.

jasonlotito2• 15 years ago

No. He knew exactly what the question was about, and what it was regarding. Their was no misunderstanding there. He didn't appreciate the word choice because characterizing it as a security issue implies certain things. But no, he knew exactly what he was being asked.

Sure, the initial question was poorly worded, but he's not a stupid man.

joelhaasnoot• 15 years ago

He may not be stupid, but governments harass companies all the time and put them into situations they don't want to be. RIM is not special, and being in an interview you get asked questions you don't want to answer. He definately could've played along and answered it. But that may just be my Dutch/European directness.

pedalpete4• 15 years ago

I thought the way the first question was worded was intentionally misleading. The interviewers second try was better, but at that point, I think they had already soured the interview.

I also think that the issue was dealt with, and the countries who had threatened to shutdown RIM, are no longer posturing, so it is kind of like bringing up old bad news for no reason, when the company is really there to promote the Playbook and show of their tech, not delve into an old issue that has been resolved, and answer questions that have been answered already.

I'd feel differently if this was an ongoing issue, but a google search shows that this was an issue last summer, and doesn't appear to really have come up since. That's just bringing back bad news which has no bearing on today.

whyleyc• 15 years ago

In which case if it was really a "non-issue" the RIM CEO should have said as much, and issued a quick reassurance for users.

Instead by getting so defensive he's guaranteed that the InterWebs will now be talking about this and not the PlayBook.

Pahalial• 15 years ago

It's only retreading old ground if the resolution is public knowledge. As mentioned elsewhere in this topic, RIM has never given any info as to what the final result of all that pressure was - I do think it's legitimate to ask essentially whether blackberry usage in those countries is compromised.

gloob2• 15 years ago

It's entirely possible I'm in the minority on this, but the following (theatrical, paraphrased, artistic-liberty-ized) conversation implies that there is a serious security issue with Blackberry devices:

  India: Give us access to your secure messaging service.
  RIM: Okay.

omh• 15 years ago

But to be fair to RIM, the conversation seems to have been more like:

India: Give us access to your secure messaging service RIM: Sorry, that isn't technically possible India: Give us access to your secure messaging service RIM: Sorry, that isn't technically possible India: Give us access to your secure messaging service or we'll cut you off RIM: OK, we'll do everything we can

btn• 15 years ago

At the very end of the clip, Lazaridis says in closing the interview: "this [the topic being discussed] is a national security issue". He knew exactly what was being asked; and even if the phrasing was better, he'd have given the same reaction.

look_lookatme• 15 years ago

Because I'm only vaguely aware of the issue it isn't until this moment that I realize the seriousness of the question.

_b8r0• 15 years ago

You should consider the possibility that if RIM are giving this type of access to India and the Middle East, then what other countries have this type of access?

If he had answered Rory's question, would something like the one I asked above be the followup?

reneherse• 15 years ago

Indeed, using "National Security Issue" seems more like a smokescreen in this case. RIM has bent over and opened their backdoor to various governments, and this CEO is trying hard to evade going on record about the issue.

pedalpete4• 15 years ago

I strangely want to give kudos to both sides. The phrasing of 'the problems you've had in terms of security' is seriously misleading and very poorly worded. I guess I've never seen the behind the scenes legal voices jump in before, but clearly, that question is baiting (unless RIM has some security issues I'm unaware of).

On the other side, cool that the BBC posts this for all to see, rather than just hiding it away somewhere.

Though for the general public who don't know if RIM has a security flaw or not, what effect does something like this have??

jeroen2• 15 years ago

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-07-29/india...

"The [Ministry of Home Affairs] has asked the [Department of Telecommunication] to tell [RIM] in no uncertain terms that its emails and other data services must comply with formats that can be monitored by security and intelligence agencies."

The Indian government has threatened to cut off Blackberry services if RIM doesn't comply. I don't think calling that a security issue is off the mark.

nkassis• 15 years ago

It should be called a privacy issue or something like that. I think the CEO wanted to avoid having his platform deemed insecure as in has security holes.

pedalpete4• 15 years ago

Your reference is 9 months old. This is part of why it is unfair. If it was a current issue, that would make sense to bring up in the discussion. But the problem was resolved to the satisfaction of those governments, meaning that the average customer should not be concerned.

chrisvale2• 15 years ago

Rory asked an intentionally loaded and HuffPo-like question;

"Can I move on to the problems you've had in terms of security...and your various arguments you've had with the Indian government and a number of governments in the Middle East"

This is like asking Craigslist about their "issues with revenue" since it's free to post anything outside of jobs, and being free is one of the key features that defines Craigslist. Craigslist doesn't have issues with being free, OTHER PEOPLE (like newspapers) have issues with the fact that Craigslist is free. Same with RIM, OTHER PEOPLE have issues with the fact that RIM is very secure. The question implied that RIM has issues with their security.

Worst is BBC then tried to act like he wasn't sensationalizing with their take on the question Rory asked...

"...he asked a question for BBC Click about RIM's problems in India and the Middle East, where governments want to gain greater access to the tight security system used for Blackberry's business users."

No he did not. The above question is framed correctly, and I'm sure would have gotten a response.

simonsez• 15 years ago

I don't understand your analogy: in the Craigslist case Craigslist has no issues being free, but others have issues with it being free. Craiglist is not making changes to their free model to appease others.

In the RIM case the system is secure except when they are giving access to the system to governments - making it not secure (at least in many people's eyes).

How are these similar?

samstokes• 15 years ago

Ironically for Lazaridis, this is the first I'd heard of RIM's "security problems in India and the Middle East" - anyone have a link to the original story?

hubb• 15 years ago

googling "rim india" while give you a pretty broad range of stories covering the topic -- here's a sample: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-31/rim-s-agreement-wit...

basically some middle eastern governments want easier access to BB users emails.

jasonlotito2• 15 years ago

Basically, these countries are requiring companies to provide backdoors so they can read encrypted emails.

http://www.google.ca/search?q=blackberry+india&tbs=nws:1

Jun8• 15 years ago

At this level, i.e. CEO, this is pure idiocy, you should have a canned response for such questions, in fact deflating such questions is part of your job, for heaven's sake!

And they did have problems in India and Middle East, where governments wanted access to emails. Rather than bailing out like this, RIM can turn it into a PR victory, like Google did with China, saying (i) "see how secure our systems are, governments can't break in" and (ii) "we are standing up for freedom, democracy, etc."

melvinram2• 15 years ago

I agree that he should have canned responses to such questions ready to fire off at anyone who asks, though I disagree with the second part of your comment.

I probably wouldn't try to tout this. I'm sure it was sensitive matter maneuvering the matter when dealing with the governments and they don't want to bang on the hornet's nest. The governments could and probably would make doing business in those countries much more difficult than it has to be. You have everything to lose and very little to gain. It's like a black hat SEO gaining success in Google rankings and making Google's engineers look stupid to the world. Making Google look bad will only hurt you. Google makes the rules for their engines. The governments make the rules for their countries.

fleitz• 15 years ago

I think you're mistaken, that job is the role of one of the other two CEOs at RIM. The company is so fucked they can't even decide who's in charge. This is why you get products that haven't launched but can run apps from other platforms.

trotsky• 15 years ago

and (ii) "we are standing up for freedom, democracy, etc."

I think that this may be why he doesn't want to talk about the issue. Because as far as I understand it, the solution reached (at least with India) was to agree to co-locate the encryption servers in country and give the governments "live access" to them. So they didn't agree to hand over the keys but basically gave unfettered access all the same.

yuhong3• 15 years ago

>At this level, i.e. CEO, this is pure idiocy, you should have a canned response for such questions, in fact deflating such questions is part of your job, for heaven's sake!

Not in this day and age. IMO candor and honesty is much better nowadays.

blinkingled3• 15 years ago

The interview showed glimpses of desperation, edginess and plain frustration which speak volumes about RIM's approach to handling the drastically altered smart phone market.

Lazaridis kept using the words "singled out" - his reasoning behind it was because they were so successful. He was trying to convince that the carpet has not been pulled from below RIM's feet.

It showed that RIM doesn't really "get" it. They think the world is being unfair to them - they think that as a problem - not the facts that they couldn't get decent, modern smartphone hardware with a competent OS (for the market) out in years. They are just like Nokia - except they believe they have no problems.

Sure Blackberry has the best security architecture, it has never had security issues until they started using WebKit, lots of people still use it. There is no denying that. What is problematic is that those things do not matter in the battle that RIM is fighting against Android and iOS. No sane Joe with a dumb phone is going to find BB compelling for his smart phone upgrade. It's just not cool.

What RIM needs is a dual OS/dual hardware strategy - let the BB folks keep doing "Pro" phones like they do today with BB OS. Let a fresh hardware and software team look at producing great consumer phones with a consumer OS. The OS part of it is a big problem - I am sure RIM could put together a great phone after trying - not so sure about the OS part. They could be better off taking Android and making it better and distinct.

melvinram2• 15 years ago

The issue that the interviewer was asking about has nothing to do with smartphones. It's about governments wanting more access to Blackberry's records (from what I understand.)

Yes, they haven't had a good response to iOS or Android but that's completely irrelevant to the article at hand.

geoffw8• 15 years ago

an interview is an interview, he didn't need the outburst. if he'd have skipped past it straight to the "we were singled out, we're used by..." part - I'm sure we wouldn't all be discussing it.

blinkingled3• 15 years ago

It's not completely irrelevant. Having "security issues" is bad news for market share. The question wasn't asked in an isolated context - it was in the context of "bad news for market share". That's exactly why Lazaridis got emotional about it.

stashdot• 15 years ago

I am amused by this general punditry about a dual OS/dual hardware strategy. Yeah, that has just about worked out for everyone who has tried it.

blinkingled3• 15 years ago

OS doesn't matter. Apps matter. Hardware - lots of successful companies have range of hardware, nothing new there.

What you are missing is the rumored ability of QNX to be able to run Android apps. RIM may already have the dual strategy in place - they might run BB on Pro phones which can run Android apps and they can run QNX on Consumer phones which can also run Android apps. For the user - it's Android, not QNX or BB.

bruceboughton2• 15 years ago

Oddly, Blackberry is insanely cool amoung the teen crowd in the UK (well, London anyway).

Not sure why, since they have no need for business class email. BBM seems to be the main driver, even though there are plenty of altenatives on other platforms.

togasystems• 15 years ago

I have always been fascinated by BBM's popularity. Whenever somebody told me that BBM was their reason for buying a Blackberry, I always countered with text messaging is available on ALL phones. They counter with that you have to pay for text messaging and my final counter is that you already have a $60/month plan to support your Blackberry, why didn't you ask your phone company to throw in free text-messaging? They usually lower their head and buy an iPhone within three months.

JonnieCache2• 15 years ago

>Blackberry is insanely cool amoung the teen crowd in the UK

It's definitely a London thing. They became hugely popular in the summer of 2009, rapidly making their way into the constantly shifting memepool that is the grime scene.

Witness "Maxwell D - Blackberry Hype": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qtShEs5LQs

Believe it or not this isn't paid product placement. Hence he lists RIM's competitors in the intro. They probably still sent maxwell some units though.

EDIT: BBM was also heavily used as a way of sending shouts to pirate radio stations. You couldn't really ask for better marketing. It's very much waned now though.

VB6_Foreverr• 15 years ago

It's not just London or not just UK either, the teens love Blackberry where I live too

cpeterso• 15 years ago

I see plenty of teens in San Francisco using Blackberries. From what I understand, the Blackberry hardware keyboard and scrollwheel are popular with speed texters.

danudey• 15 years ago

> even though there are plenty of altenatives on other platforms.

I would argue that this is a problem, not a solution. Plenty of alternatives, all incompatible, none of which are bundled with any phone, and none of which work (or work well) on Blackberry.

raarky• 15 years ago

cheap phones and plans which are good for messaging each other.

yurisagalov• 15 years ago

I've seen a similar phenomenon in Canada. My sister (who is 17 now) and many of her friends traded in their iPhones two years ago for a Blackberry and you could not pay her enough money to switch back to an iPhone. I think it's a combination of the keyboard + BBM...

zaidf• 15 years ago

As I found out on my recent trip, Blackberry is wildly popular in India. iPhone, not as much.

On my trip before, there was no Blackberry in the market. Zero.

nikcub• 15 years ago

I don't know how else the BBC could ask the question

RIM have never been upfront with a response to the question[1] (unlike Google, and others) and what you saw in that response from Lazaridis was more of his cool PR trained responses at work ('we are being singled out', 'we have a lot of issues' etc. etc. blah blah balh)

[1] 'the question' is if RIM are providing backdoors to governments such as India, Russia et al to access encrypted messaging on the blackberry net

dataminer• 15 years ago

I doubt if Lazaridis response would have been any different, since he is quite defensive these days, but BBC could have framed it as a privacy issue which is a more accurate description.

asawilliams• 15 years ago

I think the way the question was worded could have confused people that are not familiar with the current situation between RIM and those countries. The question was worded in a way that made it sound like the device were insecure, but it is the very opposite, they are too secure by these countries standards. Lazaridis should have handled the question better by clarifying the question and then answering. He was not his best.

spinchange• 15 years ago

This is like text-book CEO stuff, right? I think his reaction and cutting the interview short confused the issue even more. If I didn't already know the background, I would think there really must be a security issue, not that some foreign governments are threatening RIM because it's too secure. I think he could've easily batted that one away, if he hadn't taken it like a personal insult.

halo• 15 years ago

I don't understand his reaction, especially when RIM's position is perfectly defensible.

A reasonable response: "I want to assure our customers that the BlackBerry platform is, and will remain, secure, but it is necessary for RIM to follow the laws of the jurisdictions we operate in".

dotBen3• 15 years ago

Rory Cellan-Jones, the interviewer, is a former colleague from my days at the BBC. Just to give some context, he is one of the BBC's most experienced business news journalists, in addition to being a more recent technology journalist.

But in a word of sound-bites and short-quotes, I'm surprised Rory didn't consider - or at least pick up after the initial rebuttal - that if Lazaridis in any way answered the question pivoted around security that it could cause a significant PR issue and even effect the share price of RIM (given it's a core value of RIM).

I'm totally across the issue being refereed to and to be fair, it isn't a security issue to RIM. Sure, it is a security issue to its users, potentially. But it's not that RIM has a security issue with its technology, it has a privacy issue from draconian laws while operating under certain government conditions.

But my reason for mentioning Rory is an experience business journalist is that this is not a technology matter, it's a subtle business-related matter, which I'd have thought Rory of all people would be cognizant of.

rbarooah• 15 years ago

It sounds as though you are suggesting that journalists should not ask CEOs questions about issues that might affect PR or the stock price.

Am I misreading you?

JoachimSchipper• 15 years ago

In general, you don't learn a lot asking people (in positions of power) questions that they will have to respond to with an uninteresting, transparent evasion or lie.

adolph• 15 years ago

I think the parent commenter is saying that it is unproductive for a journalist to ask questions that they know the CEO cannot answer because of the CEO's fiduciary responsibility to their enterprise. That isn't saying not to ask, but to pick up on cues from the interviewee that pursuing a particular line of questioning isn't going to be successful.

dotBen3• 15 years ago

I'm saying that journalists can ask whatever they want - but companies, esp CEOs, are simply unlikely to answer a significant question that could be easily miss-interpreted by the media.

Thus assuming the objective isn't to "trip the CEO up" (which I don't think it was, it isn't a BBC style) then asking/rephrasing the question differently might have helped achieve the interview Rory was looking for.

In other words, Adolph's remark is spot on.

yuhong3• 15 years ago

Now, I don't think basing compensation on stock price or judging companies based exclusively on stock price is a good idea, but that is a different topic.

JCB_K• 15 years ago

Stephen Fry (also BBC) on Twitter this morning: "On way to meet Mike Lazarides of Blackberry. Excited: he was an absolute pioneer. Interested to know what's in the pipeline. Playbook etc."

I don't really understand, why would Fry tag along to someone else's interview?

stumm• 15 years ago

You might want to update the link to the actual article rather than a BBC tech landing page. :-) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9456798.s...

blauwbilgorgel• 15 years ago

I found the final words of the interview the most striking:

>>This is not fair... What are you doing?... This is a national security issue.

A national security issue for who? The US? Can't journalists ask questions about national security issues anymore?

I can see why the US would be weary to have business people/officials traveling to a country where all their conversations can be monitored. But is this a CEO confirmation that the RIM india/pakistan issue has become a US national security issue now?

A gag order would be perfect cause for this rather strange interview-stopping behavior from someone I reckon has a lot of experience dealing with journalists.

McP• 15 years ago

I assumed he meant it was a security issue within the nations the interviewer was asking about, not the US.

uptown• 15 years ago

But RIM is a Canadian company.

yuhong3• 15 years ago

Compare with Sergey Brin of Google, BTW.

RIM CEO terminates BBC Click interview

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