South Africa wants to access BBM too

RIM can’t seem to catch a break whenever it comes to issues of its customers’ privacy. The company has gotten into trouble with multiple governments before over its unwillingness to give up the privacy of BlackBerry users that make use of BBM to communicate. In the past it has happened before in Saudi Arabia, and in India and now – South Africa wants in on the privacy invasion too.

According to the deputy communications minister, Ober Bapela, who recently spoke at the Southern Africa Telecommunications Networks and Applications conference – “there is evidence that criminals are now using BBM to plan and execute crime. We want to review BBM like in the UK and Saudi Arabia.” With such a high crime rate in South Africa, it seems justified for the government to want to snoop on BBM messages, what do you think?