For more than a decade now there has been ongoing debates about encryption and role it plays in the technology world, and unless you live under a rock, I’m sure you’ve have caught some of that debate by now. While not the sole reason for the rise in the debate, the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California have brought encryption and its use in technology to the forefront once again with many politicians and Government officials visiting the idea that limits must be placed on technology. Reason being, that same encryption used by the general public interferes with public safety because there’s growing evidence it’s also being used by terrorist organizations.

For their part, as a technology company where security and privacy is a core part of their offering, BlackBerry has remained relatively quiet on the encryption debate publicly outside of a few details shared about how they handle lawful access requests and the recent news that they would be pulling out of Pakistan due to the fact the Pakistani Government was requesting the ability to monitor all BlackBerry Enterprise Service traffic in the country, including every BES e-mail and BES BBM message, a request BlackBerry was not willing to meet as it would be a compromise in BlackBerry’s core principles of protecting customers privacy. Now, though, BlackBerry CEO John Chen has decided to relay the company’s stance through a blog post titled ‘The Encryption Debate: a Way Forward’ through the Inside BlackBerry Blog. We’ve copied it below, so nothing gets taken out of context.

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