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BlackBerry assisting police in identifying looters, BlackBerry gets UK blog hacked for its troubles

With BlackBerry makers RIM being pretty much blamed for its BBM service fuelling much of the recent unrest across London, the company announced that it was co-operating with the authorities to help identify those who have been using the closed IM service to coordinate raids and attacks. In a statement issued yesterday, Patrick Spence, managing director, global sales and regional marketing at RIM said:

“We feel for those impacted by this weekend’s riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can.

As in all markets around the world where BlackBerry is available, we cooperate with local telecommunications operators, law enforcement and regulatory officials. Similar to other technology providers in the UK we comply with The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and co-operate fully with the Home Office and UK police forces.”

Following on this announcement, it has emerged that the Inside BlackBerry has been hacked. TheNextWeb reports that the group calling itself TeaMp0isoN has threatened to publicly leak the names and addresses of RIM employees in the capital should RIM divulge any contents of BBM conversations.

TeaMp0isoN states that “innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all, the Police are looking to arrest as many people as possible to save themselves from embarrassment.”

At the time of writing, the Inside BlackBerry blog appeared to be down. We’ve spoken to RIM, asking it it had taken the blog offline; we understand that a further statement from is forthcoming. We’ll keep you posted.

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