BlackBerry confirms ‘self-destructing’ smartphone in Boeing team up
BlackBerry Ltd. announced on Friday that it is working with Boeing Co. on a high-security Android-based smartphone which can self-destruct if meddled with.
“We’re pleased to announce that Boeing is collaborating with BlackBerry to provide a secure mobile solution for Android devices utilizing our BES 12 platform,” BlackBerry CEO John Chen said on a conference call held to discuss its quarterly results. “That, by the way, is all they allow me to say.”
The collaboration will allow large corporations and government departments who purchase the secure smartphone, known as the Boeing Black, to utilize the BlackBerry Enterprise Service, or BES 12, to manage and secure devices on internal networks. BES 12 is also compatible with Android and iOS devices.
The Boeing Black developed by Boeing, the Chicago-based aerospace and defense contractor, was first revealed by Myce, citing a Federal Communications Commission filing for it earlier this year.
Text from the filing indicates that the phone will self-destruct if meddled with: “Any attempt to break open the casing of the device would trigger functions that would delete the data and software contained within the device and make the device inoperable.”
Aimed at government agencies and their contractors engaged in activities related to defense and homeland security, Boeing intends to market the phone in a manner that will obscure low level technical and operational information about the product from the general public. However, from the filing one can glean that the duel SIM phone supports GSM, WCDMA and LTE using micro SIM cards and has a HDMI port, USB, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Purchasers of the Boeing Black smartphone will be subject to signing a Purchase Agreement, which as Boeing writes in the filing, “specifically designates and protects as “proprietary information” the components, hardware, Product Software, applications, functionalities, or internal structure or workings of the Product.”
The Purchase Agreement also states, “There are no serviceable parts on Boeing’s Black phone and any attempted servicing or replacing of parts would destroy the product. The Boeing Black phone is manufactured as a sealed device both with epoxy around the casing and with screws, the heads of which are covered with tamper proof covering to identify attempted disassembly.”
Boeing has already begun offering the phone to potential customers, according to Reuters.
photo credit: SimonQ錫濛譙 via photopin cc
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