BlackBerry Maker Resists Governments? Pressure A top executive of Research In Motion, the Canadian company that makes BlackBerry smartphones, said on Tuesday that his company would not give in to pressure from foreign governments to provide access to its customers? messages. That pressure increased on Tuesday as Saudi Arabia ordered local cellphone providers to halt BlackBerry service, saying it failed to meet the country?s regulatory requirements. Mike Lazaridis, founder and co-chief executive of R.I.M, said in an interview that allowing governments to monitor messages shuttling across the BlackBerry network could endanger the company?s relationships with its customers, which include major companies and law enforcement agencies. ?We?re not going to compromise that,? Mr. Lazaridis said. ?That?s what?s made BlackBerry the No. 1 solution worldwide.? Similarly, the United Arab Emirates announced on Sunday that it would block BlackBerry e-mail and text-messaging services beginning in October. Several governments have cited national security concerns in demanding that R.I.M. open up its system. Like the Emirates, Saudi Arabia has expressed concern about BlackBerry?s highly encrypted data service, which makes it difficult to monitor communications. The suspension in Saudi Arabia is to take effect this month, according to the state-owned Saudi Press Agency. Mr. Lazaridis denied reports that the company had already granted special concessions to the governments of countries like India and China, which have large numbers of BlackBerry owners. ?That?s absolutely ridiculous and patently false,? he said. Mr. Lazaridis said the encryption that was causing alarm among foreign governments was used for many other purposes, including e-commerce transactions, teleconferencing and electronic money transfers. ?If you were to ban strong encryption, you would shut down corporations, business, commerce, banking and the Internet,? he said. ?Effectively, you?d shut it all down. That?s not likely going to happen.? Mr. Lazaridis expressed sympathy for the concerns of the Persian Gulf nations. ?I am very empathetic to their concerns and what they go through,? Mr. Lazaridis said. ?But every country goes through these things. We have to be prepared for the ramifications of the decisions we make.? R.I.M. issued a statement Tuesday that was intended to reassure customers, saying that ?customers of the BlackBerry enterprise solution can maintain confidence in the integrity of the security architecture without fear of compromise.? Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law and computer science at Harvard and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said the statement appeared to address only the products that the company sold to corporate customers, not those it sells directly to consumers. Corporate customers tend to be of less concern to governments, he said, because criminals or terrorists are less likely to engage in illegal activities from corporate e-mail systems, and because governments can go directly to those corporations to obtain employees? information. ?This doesn?t put the main question to rest,? Professor Zittrain said. ?It doesn?t explain under what circumstances would the average BlackBerry user have his communications exposed.? A spokeswoman for R.I.M. said the company would not elaborate on its statement. Mr. Lazaridis spoke after a press conference in Manhattan at which executives from AT&T and R.I.M. introduced the BlackBerry Torch 9800, the company?s first phone with both a touch screen and a slide-out keyboard. The Torch, which costs $199 with a two-year data plan, will be sold exclusively for AT&T?s network beginning Aug. 12. It has a 5-megapixel camera with a flash and runs a new version of R.I.M.?s mobile operating system called BlackBerry 6. Don Lindsay, vice president for user experience at R.I.M., pointed out the phone?s new software features, which include a redesigned home screen, improved support for multimedia and applications and a better Web browser. ?It?s not about bringing something new to BlackBerry but improving what we do best,? he said. Research In Motion has a lot riding on the release of the Torch. The company has been losing market share and mindshare to Apple and Google as more users clamor for the iPhone and smartphones powered by Android, Google?s mobile operating system. For R.I.M., this competition has increased the importance of markets in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. A report released on Monday by Nielsen said sales of R.I.M. devices to new subscribers in the United States were slowing, and that 29 percent of BlackBerry users had considered switching to the iPhone. Another report from the research firm Canalys said that in the second quarter, Android sales were up nearly 900 percent from a year ago, claiming 34 percent of the market in the United States. By comparison, Research In Motion had 32 percent, and Apple staked out 21.7 percent of the market. A year ago, R.I.M.?s share was 45 percent.
BlackBerry Maker Resists Governments? Pressure A top executive of Research In Motion, the Canadian company that makes BlackBerry smartphones, said on Tuesday that his company would not give in to pressure from foreign governments to provide access to its customers? messages. That pressure increased on Tuesday as Saudi Arabia ordered local cellphone providers to halt BlackBerry service, saying it failed to meet the country?s regulatory requirements. Mike Lazaridis, founder and co-chief executive of R.I.M, said in an interview that allowing governments to monitor messages shuttling across the BlackBerry network could endanger the company?s relationships with its customers, which include major companies and law enforcement agencies. ?We?re not going to compromise that,? Mr. Lazaridis said. ?That?s what?s made BlackBerry the No. 1 solution worldwide.? Similarly, the United Arab Emirates announced on Sunday that it would block BlackBerry e-mail and text-messaging services beginning in October. Several governments have cited national security concerns in demanding that R.I.M. open up its system. Like the Emirates, Saudi Arabia has expressed concern about BlackBerry?s highly encrypted data service, which makes it difficult to monitor communications. The suspension in Saudi Arabia is to take effect this month, according to the state-owned Saudi Press Agency. Mr. Lazaridis denied reports that the company had already granted special concessions to the governments of countries like India and China, which have large numbers of BlackBerry owners. ?That?s absolutely ridiculous and patently false,? he said. Mr. Lazaridis said the encryption that was causing alarm among foreign governments was used for many other purposes, including e-commerce transactions, teleconferencing and electronic money transfers. ?If you were to ban strong encryption, you would shut down corporations, business, commerce, banking and the Internet,? he said. ?Effectively, you?d shut it all down. That?s not likely going to happen.? Mr. Lazaridis expressed sympathy for the concerns of the Persian Gulf nations. ?I am very empathetic to their concerns and what they go through,? Mr. Lazaridis said. ?But every country goes through these things. We have to be prepared for the ramifications of the decisions we make.? R.I.M. issued a statement Tuesday that was intended to reassure customers, saying that ?customers of the BlackBerry enterprise solution can maintain confidence in the integrity of the security architecture without fear of compromise.? Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law and computer science at Harvard and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said the statement appeared to address only the products that the company sold to corporate customers, not those it sells directly to consumers. Corporate customers tend to be of less concern to governments, he said, because criminals or terrorists are less likely to engage in illegal activities from corporate e-mail systems, and because governments can go directly to those corporations to obtain employees? information. ?This doesn?t put the main question to rest,? Professor Zittrain said. ?It doesn?t explain under what circumstances would the average BlackBerry user have his communications exposed.? A spokeswoman for R.I.M. said the company would not elaborate on its statement. Mr. Lazaridis spoke after a press conference in Manhattan at which executives from AT&T and R.I.M. introduced the BlackBerry Torch 9800, the company?s first phone with both a touch screen and a slide-out keyboard. The Torch, which costs $199 with a two-year data plan, will be sold exclusively for AT&T?s network beginning Aug. 12. It has a 5-megapixel camera with a flash and runs a new version of R.I.M.?s mobile operating system called BlackBerry 6. Don Lindsay, vice president for user experience at R.I.M., pointed out the phone?s new software features, which include a redesigned home screen, improved support for multimedia and applications and a better Web browser. ?It?s not about bringing something new to BlackBerry but improving what we do best,? he said. Research In Motion has a lot riding on the release of the Torch. The company has been losing market share and mindshare to Apple and Google as more users clamor for the iPhone and smartphones powered by Android, Google?s mobile operating system. For R.I.M., this competition has increased the importance of markets in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. A report released on Monday by Nielsen said sales of R.I.M. devices to new subscribers in the United States were slowing, and that 29 percent of BlackBerry users had considered switching to the iPhone. Another report from the research firm Canalys said that in the second quarter, Android sales were up nearly 900 percent from a year ago, claiming 34 percent of the market in the United States. By comparison, Research In Motion had 32 percent, and Apple staked out 21.7 percent of the market. A year ago, R.I.M.?s share was 45 percent.
Israel Puts Off Crisis Over Conversion Law JERUSALEM ? A growing crisis between American Jews and the Israeli government over a proposed law on religious conversion was averted ? or at least delayed ? this week, with both sides agreeing to a six-month period of negotiation. But the depth of American anger and the byzantine complexity of Israeli politics suggest that a solution is a long way off. Late Thursday night, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement that Natan Sharansky, the head of the Jewish Agency, would lead a committee of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements and that no conversion law would be submitted before January. Litigation in the Israeli Supreme Court on the same topic led by the Reform and Conservative movements would be suspended for the same period. The idea of delay came from Mr. Netanyahu, who said this week that the proposed law, which had passed a parliamentary committee, ?could tear apart the Jewish people.? He had received tens of thousands of enraged e-mail messages from American Jews who had been urged to contact him by their rabbis. Many American Jews consider the Netanyahu government to be too hawkish, and the conversion controversy is seen by some analysts here and in the United States as a proxy for a broader set of disagreements, including settlement building and the Gaza blockade. ?Please join me in writing an e-mail to Prime Minister Netanyahu to call a halt to this historic mistake,? wrote Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky of Congregation Ansche Chesed on the Upper West Side last week in a typical appeal. ?Judaism and the Jewish people do not belong exclusively to the most reactionary among us!? Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel, said in an interview that Mr. Netanyahu had told him he needed American Jews on his side in his negotiations with President Obama over peace with the Palestinians and the controversy over the conversion bill was getting in the way. The bill that so enraged American Jewish leaders was actually aimed at making conversion easier for the 300,000 Israelis who moved here from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s and are not, by Orthodox rabbinic law, considered Jewish because they come from mixed parentage. The law would have done that by granting conversion powers to local rabbis across the country, a group considered closer to their communities. But after objections from the ultra-Orthodox, the bill formally placed authority for conversion in the hands of the chief rabbinate and declared Orthodox Jewish law to be the basis of conversion, making Americans fear that their more lenient conversion processes would be invalidated. As Rabbi David Schuck of the Pelham Jewish Center in Westchester said of the bill, ?It spits in the face of Diaspora Jews in particular, and if passed, it would be an acquiescence of the majority of Israeli Jews to a fundamentalist interpretation of Judaism.? This was the only issue over the past six years on which he had asked congregants to take political action, he said. David Rotem, the lawmaker behind the conversion bill, said in an interview that such views were based on a misreading of it. ?They need to check the facts before they speak,? he said of Reform and Conservative Jewish leaders. ?They are acting like absolute idiots.? The question of ?who is a Jew?? is as old as the State of Israel. The more liberal forms of Jewish practice advocated by the Reform and Conservative movements, with which most American Jews are affiliated, have never taken root here. Israel has left liturgy in the hands of the Orthodox, with most Israeli Jews leading almost completely secular lives, seeking out rabbis only at birth, marriage and death. The idea is that helping to build the Jewish state is their central means of expressing their ethnic identity. By contrast, Jews abroad seek one another out in synagogues, and have come up with ways to integrate spirituality with identity, forging rituals that respect tradition while adjusting to careers and life in a non-Jewish world. The two approaches to Jewish identity have coexisted, and while there have been tensions they rarely came to blows. But several developments of recent years have altered that. First, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking immigrants not considered Jewish has created an acute need in the eyes of Israeli leaders to find a way to integrate them in keeping with rabbinic tradition. Otherwise, they will not be able to marry, divorce or be buried here within Jewish tradition, and their children will feel deeply alienated. Mr. Rotem calls them ?a ticking bomb.? Second, the chief rabbinate, which for decades was in the hands of Orthodox Zionist parties, is now largely controlled by the non-Zionist ultra-Orthodox, who are both more liturgically rigid and less concerned with building Israel, integrating Russian speakers or keeping American Jews on board. This came about largely because the Zionist Orthodox movement had focused so heavily in recent years on settlement building in the West Bank and allowed control of religious issues to slip from its hands. Finally, American Jews, who are mostly politically liberal ? some 80 percent voted for President Obama ? have felt their attachment to Israel strained during its military operations in Lebanon and Gaza and the recent attack on a Turkish flotilla seeking to break Israel?s Gaza blockade. And since the conversion bill is being sponsored by Yisrael Beiteinu , the nationalist and mostly right-wing party of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, conditions were especially ripe for mistrust. ?There is increasing discomfort among American Jews with Israel,? commented Rabbi Donniel Hartman, president of Jerusalem?s Shalom Hartman Institute , which is devoted to exploring Jewish issues. ?This issue is a place where they can express the displeasure that they might not be willing to state on the flotilla and other political matters.? For that reason, some here, even among those sympathetic to the Reform and Conservative movements, like Rabbi Hartman, feel that the American reaction to the Rotem bill was overly aggressive. ?They overstated this one,? he said. Meanwhile, the Reform and Conservative movements believed that the Supreme Court here was looking favorably on their attempt to gain legitimacy for their conversions. A likely decision in their favor drove the rabbinate to push back through backing this legislation. Mr. Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident who once led a Russian immigrant political party here and who will head the conversion compromise search, said by telephone that intensive contacts over the past week had created increased understanding between the sides. He added that at a time when Israel?s legitimacy was increasingly under attack the Jewish people needed unity and that the legitimacy of all strains needed to be acknowledged. Most observers, however, see a looming confrontation. As David Horovitz, the editor of The Jerusalem Post, put it in his weekly column on Friday, ?What we are facing is an explosive global crisis over Jewish identity ? a huge, snowballing disaster that is ripping Israeli-Diaspora relations.?
