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In 2008, the Indian government demanded that RIM give it access to encrypted BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) traffic and email. Last week, the Indian telecommunications ministry gave RIM until the end of the month to give this access, otherwise it could ban BBM, just like it did two years ago

Now, the United Arab Emirates has tried to do the same thing…

The UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority said in a statement "BlackBerry operates beyond the jurisdiction of national legislation" as is stores its data offshore," and is concerned that misuse may have "serious social, judicial and national security repercussions".

"Currently, BlackBerry operates beyond the jurisdiction of national legislation, since it is the only device operating in the UAE that immediately exports its data offshore and is managed by a foreign, commercial organisation," it said.

"Like many other countries, we have been working for a long time to resolve these critical issues, with the objective of finding a solution that operates within the boundaries of UAE law."

Reports say that last June, UAE operator “Etisalat released a software patch for the BlackBerry handset that was reported to be a spyware program giving the country's security services a back-door access to users emails and accounts. Etisalat denied that the application was spyware and said that the patch was designed to improve handover performance between GSM and 3G networks.”

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