A senior aide to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had his BlackBerry stolen by Chinese intelligence agents while on a trip to China back in January 2008. According to another unmentioned senior Brit official, the incident had “all the hallmarks of a suspected honeytrap by Chinese intelligence.”

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove had lost his BlackBerry device more than once.

The knee-jerk reaction: remotely wipe the devices regularly or at least if they go M.I.A.

But here is the rub. How about the loss of all the data on the device? Here is a definitive case to make about ensuring the ongoing archiving of email, text messages and phone usage. If an organization is forced to format a device, they still need the data somewhere.

We recently were told by a prospect that their legal department determined that there was no need to archive SMS text messages. I am sure Kobe Bryant wished that was the case in 2004 when his text messages were subpoenaed.

Now throw into the mix that a user’s BlackBerry is stolen and a legal action happens to occur against that user’s organization. They now have a huge issue if that organization chose not to archive email and text messages. They cannot produce data for discovery.

So do organizations need to archive email and text messages? I think so.