French Government Develops BlackBerry Allergy

BlackBerrys may feel like tools of high-tech spycraft, but they're not—or so the manufacturer is attempting to convince the French government. Worried that American intelligence could intercept transmissions from the addictive devices, the government has renewed an apparently futile 18-month-old ban on high-level officials' use, according to the Times of London.

France has not officially OK'd government BlackBerry use, at least in part because of concerns that messages pass through servers in the US and UK. Cracking the encryption would take as long "as it would for the sun to burn out," manufacturer Research in Motion said today; the company hopes to get the government's go-ahead next month. (More BlackBerry stories.)