“It is working fine, and I am happy for the moment,” said Nora Abdul Aziz Al-Anbar, a Riyadh-based Saudi business executive. “We were told that it would stop working from this morning. Then we got a message that it would stop only for three hours, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. And now we are being told that the ban would go into effect at midnight,” she said. “As always, there is no clarity.”

What if the ban goes into effect? “I will be the most unhappy person,” she said and went on to list a number of reasons why. “I have not one but two BlackBerrys — one for business and one for personal use. I have two sisters outside of Saudi Arabia, and we are constantly in touch with each other via these BlackBerries. I use the BlackBerry Messenger widely, and it is this service that is in the eye of the storm. It is thanks to this BlackBerry that I have been able to cut down on my massive phone bills in the past. My bills used to run into the thousands. The BlackBerry Messenger is free. Voice messages do not cost you a halala. You can send pictures via Messenger at no extra cost. Previously we would send such stuff via MMS which was expensive. It is this cost-effectiveness that is behind the massive popularity of BlackBerrys. They are affordable to the Saudi middle class.”

Waleed Saleh Al-Humaidi, human resources manager at a well-known company in Riyadh, says security is not the real reason behind the ban. “If you ask me, I would blame it on the loss of revenue for the telecom companies. They are the ones behind this game. They are losing money because every single person is using the BlackBerry to communicate. It is a fantastic communication tool, and the service does not cost you a fortune. Look at BlackBerry’s penetration in the Saudi market. It is widely popular among all classes — the rich and the poor alike. I am against the ban. Totally.”

Do Al-Humaidi and Al-Anbar not know the government’s point of view, which is that the service cannot be monitored, because BlackBerry servers are located outside the country and beyond the reach of Saudi authorities, and it is therefore susceptible to be misused by terrorists?

“If it is the intention of terrorists to kill, they will anyways,” said Al-Humaidi. “Are you trying to suggest that the ban on BlackBerry will stop them from carrying out their nefarious tasks? They will find other ways. Just because some people are abusing a certain technology, we should shut off that technology altogether? Yes, our government needs to find ways to meet our security needs, but banning anything cannot be the answer.”

For Al-Anbar, it is always about terrorists. “Well, terrorists have mostly used cars to carry out bombings. Shall we ban cars then? It is all about control. It is all about violating our privacy. To me, BlackBerry is a perfect tool of communication for our society, and this ban is absolutely uncalled for. We just can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, can we?”

“Absolutely not ... the ban is totally justified and perfectly understandable,” says Jeddah-based radio broadcaster and author Samar Fatany. “The government is well within its rights to block BlackBerry,” she said and described the service as nothing more than a luxury. “People can do without it ... it is no big deal.”

According to Fatany, there are serious issues involved here. “If there are spies in here using the BlackBerry to communicate and plot against us, and then my government is not able to intercept those communications and messages, that is scary and alarming. I trust my government. Even if my government has access to information that we share on a daily basis through messages and other media, I know my government is not going to harm me. It is the government’s duty to protect its citizens. The ban is a step in that direction. In any case, those who have done no wrong have nothing to fear,” reiterated Fatany.

Fatany says she has watched many Hollywood films on how high-technology is being used to bump people off, to assassinate the characters of innocent people, to ruin the lives of innocent people. “At first, I would just dismiss them as science-fiction. It is still a science but no longer fiction. Governments out there are monitoring our lives in the cyberworld. I would advise youngsters and everybody to be careful about what they say on Facebook, for example, or on various Internet messenger services or on BlackBerry.”

The one incident that has convinced Fatany about the need for monitoring BlackBerry services is the assassination by Israeli agents in Dubai in January this year of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh. “If those murderers had used BlackBerry, and if UAE authorities were not able to intercept those messages then the UAE is justified in banning the service. However popular a service is, if it has the potential to harm national interest then it is no good.”

Jeddah-based journalist Maha Akeel has been using BlackBerry for a year-and-a-half now. “I use it primarily for checking my mail and browsing the Internet. Those aspects of the service, I am told, will not be blocked. So I am not really worried. However, I do hope that they would sort out this problem and not resort to banning it. BlackBerry Messenger is very easy to use, and our youngsters have developed their own shortcuts to communicate through these smart devices.”

However, Akeel understands the government’s point of view. “I hope Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian company that makes BlackBerries, will meet the government’s requirements, and I also hope at the same time that people’s privacy will not be violated.”

Ban or no ban, she said the whole issue has been pretty educational for the people. “I knew that people who were suspect in the eyes of the government were being monitored and that their conversations were looked into. However, I didn’t know that every single text message or every picture that one sends via his or her phone is stored somewhere. This debate indicated the extent to which information is being stored. That has been the surprising part of this whole debate in our media and this will certainly put people off (technology),” added Akeel.

Al-Anbar agrees. “If I get to hear tomorrow that RIM has acceded to government requests then I will stop sending pictures via my BlackBerry. I will be careful in what words I use while communicating with my friends. I will be on guard — without a doubt.”

As a well-known editor in chief of a leading Saudi newspaper pointed out on Al-Jazeera English television channel on Friday, you can’t beat technology. “In another two or three years there will be gadgets even more advanced than BlackBerries. What will we do then?” he wondered. “Our kids are pretty ingenuous these days. They already know of ways to circumvent the ban on websites.”

The governments of Saudi Arabia, UAE and India insist that BlackBerry operates beyond the jurisdiction of national legislation, since it is the only device that immediately exports its data offshore and is managed by a foreign, commercial organization. As a result of how BlackBerry data is managed and stored, in their current form, certain BlackBerry applications allow people to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial and national-security repercussions, they said.

The BlackBerry encryption used by RIM has been one of the device’s main selling points, helping it gain a loyal following since its introduction in 1999. The security features behind the BlackBerry originally were designed to provide corporate users with the ability to transmit information wirelessly with the knowledge that not even RIM could access their data.

As reported earlier, each BlackBerry device generates its own “master key,” which is used to encrypt outgoing messages. The data is then sent to a network operating center located in Canada. From there, the messages are relayed to the recipient’s wireless provider, which in turn delivers them to their BlackBerry devices and decrypts them. The “master key” is kept on the device for 30 days, after which a new key is generated. The old key is kept on the device for seven days before it is deleted.

“This needs an intelligent response,” said the Saudi editor in chief. “We all are law-abiding citizens. We are with our government in the war on terror, but this ban goes against the free flow of information.”