The UAE says it will block BlackBerry e-mail, messaging and Web services Oct. 11 unless authorities can gain access to the encrypted data traffic — a demand by other countries warning of possible bans including India.

The proposed UAE action threatens BlackBerry service for an estimated 500,000 local subscribers and could tarnish the country’s reputation as the Gulf’s business and tourism hub with potentially millions of visitors left without key BlackBerry services.

Dubai’s police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, said that fears of espionage and information sharing by foe Israel — as well as UAE allies United States and Britain — helped prompt the possible limits on the popular BlackBerry.

Tamim told a conference on information technology that the proposed BlackBerry curbs are also “meant to control false rumors and defamation of public figures due to the absence of surveillance,” according to a story posted Friday on the website of the UAE newspaper Al-Khaleej. . . . .

As a result, air marshals were onboard a Chicago-Amsterdam flight yesterday and kept a close watch on two suspicious passengers who had triggered security alarms, but were allowed to travel for “investigative purposes,” law enforcement sources told ABC News.

Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al Soofi and Hezem al Murisi were taken off the United flight in Amsterdam by Dutch officials who detained them at the request of the U.S. government for questioning in a terrorism investigation. Passengers on the flight recorded a cell phone video of the two men being taken into custody.

U.S. officials said the two appeared to be travelling with what were termed “mock bombs” in their luggage. “This was almost certainly a dry run, a test,” said one senior law enforcement official.

Airport security screeners in Birminghamn, Alabama first stopped al Soofi and referred him to additional screening because of what officials said was his “bulky clothing,” which can be seen on security camera photos obtained by ABC News.

Officials said al Soofi was found to be carrying $7000 in cash, and a check of his luggage found a cell phone taped to a Pepto-Bismol bottle, three cell phones taped together, several watches taped together, a box cutter and three large knives. . . . . . The two man attracted further suspicion in Chicago when al Soofi checked his lugage on a flight to Washington’s Dulles Airport but boarded a different flight to Dubai. . . . .

‘There was an air of almost religious sanctity about Mossad, and when you served, it was a service for the nation, for the people. You were inculcated with a deep feeling and an almost messianic mission to preserve the essentials of the state of Israel.’

The sense of mission came from a generation who saw Mossad’s task as to prevent another holocaust. They were willing to do whatever it took to achieve that. In the years after World War II, covert actions included ‘cleaning up unfinished business’. One operation involved the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Nazi death camps, who was hiding in Argentina. He was returned to Israel, put on trial and hanged in 1962. . . . .

. . . . Mossad built a fearsome reputation for its daring undercover work, and at one time its agents were considered among the world’s best. ‘They looked for honest crooks,’ says Gad Shimron, who joined Mossad in the Seventies. ‘They took people like me – obedient citizens of Israel – and taught us how to steal, how to kill and to do things that normal people don’t do.’

Shimron was recruited into the elite operational unit of Mossad when he left the army. He was told that out of 1,500 candidates only ten were chosen. After nine months’ training, six graduated into the team that carried out the most sensitive undercover operations.

‘This is not Europe, our neighbours are not Swedes or Norwegians,’ Shimron tells me in his Tel Aviv flat. ‘We can win battles, but if we lose one that’s the end of everything. We are aware that because of the extraordinary situation of the state of Israel in the world we, as members of the Mossad elite unit, were allowed to do things that our colleagues in MI6 or the CIA sometimes weren’t allowed to do.’ . . . .

♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 220–An Introduction to Israeli Intelligence and Counterintelligence Methodologies

The findings show American authorities playing a bigger role in the investigation than previously revealed. The case is especially delicate for the U.S., because Dubai police have said their prime suspect in the case is Mossad, the intelligence service of Israel, a key U.S. ally. . . .

. . . . .Using facial recognition software, a source familiar with the investigation said, a team of 20 investigators pored over hours of security camera videos to sketch out a picture of the suspects’ movements and accomplices, a group that has grown to at least 27 people. They tracked down taxi drivers and grilled them about the suspects. They even traced the trip of a female suspect to a shopping center and discovered what she bought. . . . .

♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 202–Vulnerabilities of an Intelligence Professional