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WATERLOO, Ont. — The head of BlackBerry says tech companies have a duty to be “good corporate citizens” who co-operate with reasonable lawful requests from the police.

The comments were in response to a story last week by Vice, which reported the RCMP intercepted and decrypted more than a million BlackBerry messages as part of an investigation between 2010 and 2012.

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The probe, dubbed “Project Clemenza,” involved the killing of a Mafia crime family member.

In a blog post Monday, BlackBerry chief executive John Chen said firms need to strike a balance between protecting the right to privacy and helping investigators apprehend criminals.

Chen wrote that the world is a “dark place” when companies put their reputations above the greater good.