RIM patent locks down cameras the old fashioned way: with a key

by Chris Ziegler, posted Mar 10th 2008 at 3:47PM

Many businesses bristle at the thought of intellectual property being whisked away from their premises via camera -- a fear that becomes ever more realistic as cameraphones jump from 1 to 2, 3, or 5 megapixels -- and perhaps no phone manufacturer is more in tune to the needs of those suits than RIM. Sure enough, the BlackBerry people have come to the table with a rather unusual patent application to address the problem. Rather than remove cameras entirely a la 8800 series, they're proposing the use of a removable key to prevent the camera from being used. Insert the key, the cam works like a champ; pull it, it goes dead. Because, you know, that obviously can't be circumvented in any way.

[Via CellPassion]

Filed under: Multimedia, RIM

Tags: blackberry, camera, locking, patent, rim

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

byaah @ Mar 10th 2008 4:45PM

Of course not! Its not like I would get another key to use once they pulled mine out. No, no, that would be devious.

Neutral

Khris @ Mar 10th 2008 4:50PM

Hopefully RIM is smart enough to design it so that the key can only be used with the BB it shipped with, and the original purchaser is the only person who can request a replacement from RIM in the event it's lost.

Neutral

Verizon customer @ Mar 10th 2008 5:43PM

Wouldn't this be better served by a password protected Firmware setting?

Neutral

slamEVIL @ Mar 10th 2008 6:11PM

what's stopping you from just taking the photo with say, a real camera. you know, one that's smaller than a phone?

Neutral

Taylor @ Mar 10th 2008 6:28PM

Because if they find a camera on you, they can ask you not to bring it in and it's not a big deal. Cell phones are more difficult because they KNOW you have one on you, and it's more of a matter of if you can even stand to be without it, given it's value in the business world to a legitimate employee. If your company said no digital cameras, it wouldn't be a big deal, but no cell phones could be a huge problem.

If it were my decision though, and my company did have a need to prevent people from bringing in cameras, i wouldn't trust a software lockout to that.
-Taylor

Neutral

MadMike @ Mar 10th 2008 6:32PM

Corporate IT is narrow-minded, xenophobic and more times than not just plain dumb. That is the problem when you hire business majors to make computer decisions. Now that I have pissed off every Corporate IT lackey on Engadget, Oh wait...

Why can't they just make an IT rule to disable the camera, just like they disable service books and the like. So the guy who controls the BES server, can turn off the camera and the only way to re-enable it is to push a blank IT policy to it. Wow - that was so hard.

Even though that would just stop the employees that use corporate blackberries from stealing their own companies secrets on that phone. I don't know about you, but I have a work cell and a personal cell and my personal cell has a camera too.

Pathetic really...

Neutral

DT @ Mar 10th 2008 7:53PM

It's too bad there's no way to manufacture a phone without a camera. That would probably be a better solution.

Neutral

Mike @ Mar 10th 2008 8:02PM

I can see this now...

A "very important executive" lost his key and wants a replacement and is upset when we don't have them in stores. This is a customer service nightmare and will garner bad press as soon as CEO Leo of XYZ company can't take pictures of his ugly ass daughter.

I agree with another poster, make it a password lock instead.

Neutral

FyreStarrter @ Mar 11th 2008 11:14AM

Well in theory the idea is sound, but the execution itself is quite horrific. I think it should be as simple as entering a password & the shutter locks covering up the camera or even better use those wonderful BES policies that we are all so fond of & do the security check that way. Anything other than this key craziness. Or what about a biometrics style lock, you know like the fingerprint readers that are so popular on laptops these days? SOMETHING ANYTHING but the key craziness!!!

Neutral

dare instructor @ Mar 11th 2008 12:22PM

Remember, this is just a patent app, not an announcement of RIM's new trend for all their phones. There's no need to sell your stock, they merely came up with an idea and filed a patent so that if in the future something comes along which makes this viable they can use it or they can get money from whoever does use it.

Neutral

Qwurty @ Mar 11th 2008 12:59PM

If you work in an environment where this is that much of a problem why couldn't you just buy a BB w/o cam for business and have something else (like an iphone) for pleasure? Lots of people have more than one phone. When you leave the office just set the call forwarding on the BB to your iphone so that if a co-worker needs you after hours you can get the call w/o having to carry two phones all the time outside of work. No perfect solution and I give RIM credit for at least trying to figure something out.

Neutral

Mark @ Mar 11th 2008 1:57PM

I assumed this was not to benefit my own company (the BES solution would work best for that). I see the benefit being that when I enter ANOTHER company, their security desk can remove my key, preventing me from taking pictures with my BB while I'm at that location. When I leave, they return the key, just as if I were picking up my regular camera and other paraphernalia.

Neutral

Mcrae79 @ Mar 13th 2008 1:19AM

Ya! were going to have to put a SELL on RIM's stock, If there willing to put time money and research into this I'm not very confident in there future. I think the funniest thing is that this easily compromisable idea probably was thought up by one person approved by a manager and worked on by a team. Then they wasted taxpayers money and government officials time. I wish them luck against Apple, Google and Nokia