阿联酋与黑莓（双语）

BLACKBERRIES do not grow in deserts, except in the virtual world of hand-held communications gear, where they are global, ubiquitous and spelt a little differently.But not for long, perhaps, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). From October 11th BlackBerry mobile phones will not work there for anything but basic telephone calls, unless Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian firm that makes the phones, can strike a deal with the Gulf state’s regulatory authorities.

黑莓这种水果不产于沙漠，但是手机的虚拟世界除外。在这個虚拟世界里黑莓风行全球，无所不在，且各地的黑莓几乎没有差异。但是在阿联酋（UAE）这也许好景不长了。从10月11日起，阿联酋将停止黑莓除基本通话功能外的所有服务，除非此款手机的制造商，加拿大的Research in Motion（RIM）能够和这个海湾国家的监管机构达成一个协议。

The UAE’s regulators say the BlackBerry’s proprietary network and tight encryption make messages the devices send over the internet too secure.Other Gulf countries seem to agree. They (and India) are also threatening to limit BlackBerry use unless ways can be found to let their governments intercept some sorts of communication.This could affect not only BlackBerry owners in the Gulf but millions of people in transit.And a wider ban could shrink BlackBerry sales in a small but lucrative and fast-growing market.

阿联酋的监管官员称，黑莓的专用网络，和先进的加密技术使该手机经因特网发送的信息安全得过了头。其他的海湾国家似乎也赞同这一说法。他们（还有印度）同样威胁要限制黑莓的服务，除非他们的政府被允许介入过滤某些类别的信息。但是这样的话，将不仅仅影响到海湾国家的黑莓持有者，还会影响需要经此中转信息的数百万其他国家的用户。而大范围的被禁，将可能使黑莓的销量在这个虽小却高利润、高成长的市场中缩水。

Security experts believe RIM has made it possible for the authorities in the United States and other countries to do varying levels of monitoring.However, it denies offering anything to one government that is not on offer to all, and it insists that it does not possess the encryption keys that handsets use to encode messages.

安全专家确信，RIM已经使监控标准的调整在美国和其他一些国家成为可能。但是，RIM拒绝向任何政府提供任何不对外开放的信息，并坚称自己并无用于手机信息加密的密钥。

Exactly what level of oversight the UAE is seeking is unclear. Its regulators may simply be adopting a hard bargaining stance with RIM because they want to be treated on a par with bigger countries. Yet the risk taken by the UAE in mount ing a high-profile challenge over such an important business tool, despite its ambition to become a global financial hub and its pretensions to being a relatively open society, hints that more may be at stake.

阿联酋追究的监管失控严重到了何种程度尚不为人所知。监管官员有可能不过是因为希望得到与大国的同等待遇而对RIM采取一种强硬姿态。阿联酋有着成为全球金融中心的雄心，和变成一个开放社会的自诩，但是向一个如此重要的商业工具发动这般高姿态的挑战所冒的风险，有可能让这一切危如累卵。

Last year Etisalat, a mobile-phone firm controlled by the UAE’s government, sent an offer of a “software upgrade” to its BlackBerry users. According to RIM, it turned out to be, in effect, a piece of spyware that could pass on any messages sent from their BlackBerrys. As the company put it: “Independent sources have concluded that it is possible that the installed software could then enable unauthorised access to private or confidential information stored on the user’s smartphone.” Etisalat continued to insist it was only intended to improve the telephones’ performance. The episode may have annoyed the UAE’s telecoms regulator, perhaps partly explaining his tough line now.

去年，由阿联酋政府控制的一家移动电话公司Etisalat向他的黑莓用户发送了一个“软件升级”的服务程序。结果最终被RIM证实为一个间谍软件,可以从用户的黑莓中窃取所有通过该手机发送的信息。按照RIM的描述：源自第三方的结论，安装该软件将可能使存贮在用户智能手机上的信息允许在未经授权的情况被访问、处理。Etisalat则坚持他们只是想要提高手机的性能。这一小插曲大概惹恼了阿联酋的监管官员，也许能部分解释他现在的强硬立场。

More recent events have made the issue even more sensitive for the UAE. In January a team of suspected Israeli agents assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior man in Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group, in a hotel room in Dubai, the UAE’s commercial capital. The hit-squad’s members, like a Pakistan-based terrorist group which attacked hotels in Mumbai in 2008, are believed to have communicated securely using BlackBerrys, frustratE ing a police investigation that identified them by CCTV footage.

近期发生的一些事件使得这个问题对阿联酋变得更加敏感。今年一月份，一小队可疑的以色列特工在阿联酋商业中心迪拜的一家酒店里暗杀了Mahmoud al-Mabhouh ，巴勒斯坦伊斯兰抵抗组织哈马斯的一名高级指挥官。与2008年袭击孟买酒店的巴基斯坦恐怖组织一样，该暗杀小组的成员被确信使用黑莓手机安全的进行了联络，挫败了已经通过监控录像辨认出他们的警方调查。更多信息请访问：http://www.24en.com/

More recently the UAE police arrested a citizen in Ras al-Khaimah, one of the federation’s seven emirates, for trying to organise protests against a rise in petrol prices. Such protests are rare in the super-rich but democracy-free UAE. The police were able to trace the organiser because he revealed his BlackBerry’s identity code in a message he had sent out, calling for the protests.

而更晚些的时候，在阿联酋七个酋长国之一的Ras al-Khaimah，警方逮捕了一名试图组织抗议汽油价格上涨活动的市民。这类抗议在超级富庶却不自由民主的阿联酋极为少见。警察之所以能够追查到组织者，是因为他在发送一条号召抗议的信息时暴露了自己的黑莓认证码。