RIM changes tune on employee calls

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has sought to clarify what it claims is confusion over whether the company records all employee telephone conversations in the interest of maintaining control over intellectual property.

Research In Motion CIO Robin Bienfait

(Credit: Research In Motion)

During a visit to Sydney in early March, RIM Chief Information Officer Robin Bienfait said that all actions carried out on RIM's internal network were logged, meaning some employees may want their own private handset if they wanted to have personal conversations. "Everything. I record everything," she said.

But a RIM spokesperson, in a follow-up statement, said Bienfait's comments had been misunderstood.

"Robin Bienfait's comments were intended to describe a capability that exists with RIM's BlackBerry MVS technology that allows companies to record both voice- and data-based conversations which is particularly useful for RIM's customers in regulated industries that require such ability," they wrote.

"Ms. Bienfait did not intend to suggest that RIM itself records employee phone calls...I have now confirmed that RIM does not record employee phone calls."

The spokesperson said RIM had deployed an internal beta test of the MVS technology to a subset of employees, and claimed Bienfait had intended to convey that RIM was recording data that was transmitted over voice channels (e.g., SMS messages) as well as data channels (e.g., e-mail messages and instant-messaging sessions).

However, the spokesperson said RIM was not recording the phone calls of the employees involved in the beta test or any other employees.

Renai LeMay of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

[styymy]

It's too late, she can't take it back.

[inachu1]

iit depends if it is IN HOUSE phone snooping or listening in to customer support talking with customers to make sure customers are getting the proper support. If so then yeah listen in and they do all across usa to do this. But if it is for example John wants to chat about gossip he heard in the mens room with sally on the 3rd floor of the same company and they listen in then yes employees can go on the attack. Many times employee privacy lawsuit may fail but in this day and age when companies hire people to listen in when calls are made to phone to protect intullectual property then they have every right to listne in. I know for a factmy calls are intercepted by third party many times.

Sometimes the newly hired IP(intellectual property) phone employee joins the call in a wrong way and the call intercepted sounds like a virtual echo to the caller who picked up the phone to answer it.

In either case for any reason this is why none of my friends have my work number.
Unfortunatley my mother has my number and once left 20 voice mails over a 2 day period.
I hope they listened to all her calls so I can bore the heck out of these IP snooping employees.

[globalist_agenda]

Those whacky French-Canadian Socialists. All your person belong to us.