A feud is brewing up, however it's not rappers or celebrities this time, but giant tech companies.
As reported by Ars Technica, BlackBerry CEO John Chen apparently just threw a major criticism against Apple Inc.
According to the report, Chen ripped Apple's position regarding its "Pro Privacy" stance and said that the Cupertino-based company is hindering authorities to access a suspected criminal's mobile device, due to "tarnishing" the company's image.
Chen wrote in a blog post, "We are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good."
"At BlackBerry, we understand, arguably more than any other large tech company, the importance of our privacy commitment to product success and brand value: privacy and security form the crux of everything we do. However, our privacy commitment does not extend to criminals,"
He titled his blog post "The Encryption Debate: a Way Forward" and heavily discussed the fine line between protecting user's privacy or hindering the law.
The rivalry between Apple and BlackBerry goes way back and although the Canadian-based company has now losing popularity, it's QWERTY keyboards can still be heard in the halls of many government offices, Gizmodo has learned.
But Apple argued that forcing the company to extract data in that specific case is without clear legal authority to do so and could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers, which will subsequently destroy their pro-consumer and pro-privacy reputation.
Privacy is really important and is actually a rarity nowadays. Ever since the NSA scandal that broke way back in 2013, combined with the increasing prevalence of social media, our notion of "private matters" has become basically non-existent.
But still, there are intimate and personal details that we like to keep between us and the people we know well; however, when it comes to crimes like this, BlackBerry does make a great point.
But Chen did reiterate that it is true that corporations must reject attempts by the federal agencies to overstep. He even cited the company refused to place backdoors in its devices and softwares and said that it never allowed the government to access its own servers and never will.
Chen then said, "We have made decisions to exit national markets when the jurisdictional authorities demand access that would abuse the privacy of law-abiding citizens."
In addition to that, Apple Insider noted that Apple remains to be a vocal opponent to proposals by the U.S. government to install software backdoors into encrypted services.
