Pentagon Deals another Blow to Blackberry Contract

While Pentagon is still using Blackberry devices, the officials are now looking elsewhere for exclusive contracts to grant added security modules. It looks like the U.S. Department of Defense is on the prowl for services from Google and Apple in an attempt to provide better data protection, security and fortified privacy settings.

Speaking of privacy, what about regular U.S. citizens who are skillfully manipulated into trusting bogus privacy policies, Obama NDAAs and a lot of stuff that simply falls through the cracks? Does anyone have an answer to this hypocrisy?

Anyhow, coming back to ‘Research in Motion’ the Blackberry developer company, it appears that the government is all up for enforcing the U.S. Military Security modules. Because Pentagon officials are interested in using “new and improved devices for innovative solutions”, they can’t rely 100% on Blackberry services anymore.

According to a Pentagon spokesperson, “DISA is managing an enterprise e-mail capability that continues to support large numbers of RIM devices while moving forward with the department’s planned mobile management capability that will support a variety of mobility devices”.

The “good news”, for time being is, that Pentagon and DoD are not considering abandoning Blackberry devices completely. On the other hand, as of last week’s progress on security and protection policies, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement guys are also contemplating using the iPhone for their day-to-day tasks. Agency representatives believe that RIM does not have what it takes to “keeping up with the growing needs”. Strange, isn’t it?

U.S. Government Opening Bidding to Apple and Google?

RIM has enjoyed the luxury of serving sensitive U.S. departments for a long time now. It does seem a little weird as to how the government officials and Pentagon guys have changed their stance on Blackberry services all of a sudden.

Paul Lucier, RIM’s Vice President of Govt. Solutions still believes that Blackberry is, was and always will be the best solution for the U.S. Military and Law Making agencies. “We are confident that BlackBerry is, and will continue to be, the best solution for government agencies. BlackBerry brings unparalleled real-time mobile access to police forces and the military to ensure public safety.”

Pentagon is ready to sign contract again in April 2013. Until then, RIM is in for a bumpy ride.