Since the revelations of widespread intelligence-agency eavesdropping on the digital communications of millions of people in the United States and around the world, governments and technology companies have been under immense pressure to explain exactly how pervasive the monitoring has become. Users of e-mail and social networks provided by the likes of Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have found themselves asking whether there are any means of keeping their data totally secure.
The short answer, it seems, is that there isn’t. And new revelations suggest that even the BlackBerry, touted by Research In Motion Ltd. as the most secure form of wireless communication in the market, could not clock the prying eyes of government.
The Guardian newspaper reported that the Government Communications Headquarters, Britain’s intelligence agency, spied on the e-mail and phone communications of visiting foreign dignitaries during meetings in London in 2009. The paper reported that, among other things, the GCHQ had manged to “penetrate” the security of the visiting officials’ BlackBerrys.
Read more: Why privacy is the price of digital-age communication - The Globe and Mail
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