Posted on Thursday, June 21 2007 @ 15:52 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
France has warned officials on the use of BlackBerry phones, claiming they might be a threat to French state secrets. Forbes
reports:
"It's not a question of trust," French lawmaker Pierre Lasbordes told The Associated Press. "We are friends with the Americans, the Anglo-Saxons, but it's economic war."
Le Monde newspaper, which broke the story, described BlackBerry withdrawal among those who have given them up. "We feel that we are wasting huge amounts of time, having to relearn how to work in the old way," the daily quoted a ministry office director as saying.
E-mails sent from "Le BlackBerry" pass through servers in the United States and Britain, and France fears that makes the system vulnerable to snooping by the U.S. National Security Agency, Le Monde reported. The company that makes BlackBerrys, however, denies such spying is possible.
