BlackBerry Employees Threatened Over London Riots

Hackers have made it clear to RIM BlackBerry that releasing details about the London Riots to the authorities will result in them 'regretting it'.

BlackBerry Messenger, the private group messaging service installed on all BB devices has been widely accused as one of the triggering pieces of tech helping to enflame the London Riots. The service has boomed with popularity as unlike Twitter and Facebook all the messages sent are private. The media or Police can't do a quick Google search to find out what people are saying and where it's all going down. A group calling themselves 'Team Poison' would rather RIM kept it that way.

The hack appeared briefly on the company blog: blogs.blackberry.com reading “Dear Rim; You Will _NOT_ assist the UK Police because if u do innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all”. The hackers claim to hold information about RIM employees and are prepared to publish them online. They continued “if u assist the police, we _WILL_ make this information public and pass it onto rioters…. do you really want a bunch of angry youths on your employees doorsteps? Think about it…. and don’t think that the police will protect your employees, the police can’t protect themselves let alone protect others”.

This comes after BlackBerry released a statement claiming the company is “engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can”. I'm sure that the Police would love that to mean giving them a feed of all BB Messages, in reality I doubt it will be anything like that.

Other social networks seem to mainly being used for good. The @riotcleaup twitter profile and riotcleanup.co.uk have been helping people find local areas to meet up and help with the clean up operation after last night. The majority of people seem to be disgusted by the actions taking place. Maybe I'm just not following all the hooligans though. 

@techByJack