For BlackBerry Messenger users in the United Kingdom there might be some bad news. RIM announced yesterday that they would get in touch with mobile operated and shut their messenger service in case of civil emergency in the future.

The announcement follows a meeting held yesterday where high profile executives from BlackBerry, Twitter and Facebook were questioned by the British Government in regards to the riots that took place in early August.

A lot of  people felt that social networking websites and BlackBerry Messenger were used to coordinate the attacks. Critics even termed the unfortunate event as the ‘BlackBerry Riots‘

Police officials singled out BBM as a major tool to fuel the riots. Keeping this in mind, officials at RIM said that they would comply with authorities and shut down their services if the Government demands.

Stephen Bates from RIM said,

“From our perspective we comply with the law and if the instruction would be to close down the mobile networks which is the method by which that would be enacted, we would then comply, we would then work with those mobile operators to help them meet the obligations as defined by that act”

Following the decision, many countries might want to follow suit and make stricter norms for BlackBerry, which might be a big cause of worry for RIM.