Ottawa: BlackBerry said Monday it is exiting Pakistan rather than hand over its customers' private messages, after the government demanded access to encrypted data sent through company servers.
Pakistan gave the Canadian smartphone maker until December 31 to comply but BlackBerry said it would immediately discontinue operations in the country.
"While we regret leaving this important market and our valued customers there, remaining in Pakistan would have meant forfeiting our commitment to protect our users' privacy," chief operating officer Marty Beard said in a blog post.
"That is a compromise we are not willing to make."
The firm based in Waterloo, Ontario does cooperate with criminal investigations, but Beard said Pakistan wanted a "back door" to gain "unfettered access" to all BlackBerry mobile communications including emails and text messages "for security reasons."
This "was not a question of public safety," he said.
"The truth is that the Pakistani government wanted the ability to monitor all BlackBerry Enterprise Service traffic in the country."
The move comes amid increased efforts by government to gain access to encrypted messages for criminal and national security investigations.
US tech giants Apple and Google have implemented encryption for smartphones so that only users have the keys, meaning the companies cannot hard over data even with a warrant or subpoena.
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