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RIM wants to secure BlackBerry camera with a lock and key

IntoMobile Research In Motion is all about getting its BlackBerry smartphones distributed for fleet-use in enterprise environments. Unfortunately, that means that corporate users will have to opt for the camera-less BlackBerry 8800 series. It would be a bad day to have corporate secrets walk out the door inside some cameraphone's flash memory. On the one hand, nixing the camera is a good security measure. On the other hand, corporate users won't have a camera to play with when outside the office. RIM Patent application uses lock and key to secure caera in BlackBerry So, RIM has come up with a novel interesting old-school solution to keeping those trade-secrets from ever getting their picture taken. The latest patent application from the Canadian outfit outlines a method to lock-down and disable a smartphone's camera with the help of a key. No, it's not some high-tech encryption key, it's your plain-old lock-and-key system. When the key is inserted, the handset lets you take pictures with abandon. Remove the key and? not so much. Sounds secure enough - unless the key looks like the one shown in the diagram. Let's see if this particular patent application makes it from drawing board to real-life.

Full post as published by The Trade Secrets Vault on March 11, 2008 (boomark / email).