Apparently in retaliation for this, hackers defaced the official BlackBerry blog and warned of further reprisals in the event that the BBM data was handed over to the police.
Newswire reports say that RIM appears to be treading carefully on the issue, just as it did in the Arab Spring, Infosecurity notes, when it agreed to allow access to its server data to various Middle-Eastern governments after various government's threatened to ban the use of BlackBerry smartphones in their countries.
In a press statement, RIM said: "As in all markets around the world where BlackBerry is available, we cooperate with local telecommunications operators, law enforcement and regulatory officials."
The CNet newswire says that this was enough to trigger a response from a hacktivist group called Team Poison, which subsequently posted a message on RIM's BlackBerry blog and announced on Twitter that it had compromised the site.
“It then fired a warning shot of sorts, threatening to release access to the company's database if RIM shares information that helps the police make arrest”, says the newswire.
“BlackBerry Messenger has emerged as a key – some say the main – communications vehicle for people participating in the riots. A recent study named BlackBerry as the most common handset used by British teens, with some 37% owning one. Unlike Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, messages sent via BlackBerry are encrypted and thus private”, the newswire adds.
In parallel with the RIM developments, David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, has appealed for RIM to suspend its BBM service, tweeting that BBM is one of the reasons why unsophisticated criminals are outfoxing an otherwise sophisticated police force.
"BBM is different as it is encrypted and police can't access it", he said on Twitter.
The MSNBC newswire, meanwhile, quotes Sameet Kanade, an analyst with Northern Securities in Toronto, as saying that RIM will need the directive of the UK authorities and the cooperation of the cellular carriers in order to hand on any BBM data the police.
“Lawful intercept is the only valid legal reason that a carrier and handset vendor can intervene”, he told the newswire, adding that, in terms of actual mechanism, RIM has always claimed that it is unable to de-encrypt/decipher messages routed through the BlackBerry servers.
“It may be able to disable the routing of messages at best, from what I understand."
Geoff Blaber, an analyst with CCS Insight, meanwhile told MSNBC that one option would be to switch BBM off, a procedure that Infosecurity understands would be legal, although might upset its UK user base.