BERLIN--The German government has approved the sale of encrypted
phone-maker Secusmart GmbH to Canada's BlackBerry Ltd., saying it
has no national security concerns.
The deal has been weighed down by ongoing trans-Atlantic
tensions relating to spying, after revelations in the summer of
2013 that the U.S. government had tapped German chancellor Angela
Merkel's phone.
While BlackBerry is a Canadian company, the Canadian government
has an intelligence agreement with the U.S. that raised concerns in
Germany.
The Düsseldorf-based Secusmart sells encrypted landline and
mobile phones to the German government for use at home and abroad.
After Secusmart ran into financial trouble, BlackBerry showed
interest in an acquisition, and the two companies agreed on a deal
back in July.
After the deal was announced, several German government
ministries said they would evaluate the terms in light of national
security and competition concerns. On Friday, a spokesman for the
Interior Ministry in Berlin said that a service contract between
the German government and BlackBerry takes into account German
security interests.
A person familiar with the matter said BlackBerry was forced to
reveal its source code to the Federal Office for Information
Security, the government authority responsible for government
computer security in Germany.
The Canadian phone maker and software company also issued a
public pledge not to spy on German soil, a "no-spy" agreement that
has become common for German government contracts.
A BlackBerry executive said the deal was never in trouble and
the investigation was a normal part of doing business with the
German government.
Write to Stefan Lange at stefan.lange@wsj.com and Chase Gummer
at Chase.Gummer@wsj.com
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