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| Blackberry phones belonging to senior members of US President Barack Obama's cabinet are pictured just outside the Cabinet Room of the White House |
Washington - The Pentagon will no longer retain
an exclusive contract with Blackberry maker Research in Motion and has
invited companies such as Apple to offer smartphones to its vast work
force.
The move, announced on Thursday,
comes only days after another government agency, the US Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agency, said it was dropping the Blackberry device
altogether in favour of Apple's iPhone.
The Defence Department insisted it
would still continue to work with Blackberry phones and that “large
numbers of RIM devices” would remain in use among thousands of military
personnel and civilians working for the Pentagon.
“DoD is not moving away from RIM
and the use of Blackberry mobile devices,” spokesman Lieutenant Damien
Pickart said in an email.
The Pentagon, however, wants to
establish a “multi-vendor environment” while still adhering to “strict
security requirements,” he added.
The US military and intelligence
agencies have long preferred the Blackberry due to security concerns and
had worried that Apple, Android and other smart phones lacked
sufficient safeguards.
But the
technology has advanced and Pentagon officials said innovative
applications available on other smartphones could be useful for
different units or offices.
“There's a lot more flash and bang
with an Apple iPhone or an Android,” said one Defence official, who
spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Canadian firm RIM has struggled to compete against the iPhone and devices that use Google's Android system.
The change at the Pentagon would
likely be carried out as a pilot project in a particular unit or
organisation, the official said.
Questions remain, however, as to
whether companies other than Blackberry can meet the strict encryption
criteria employed by intelligence services within the Defence
Department, including the eavesdropping National Security Agency. -
Sapa-AFP
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