I am sorry, I disagree. Blackberries are extremely risky and very exploitable—an abomination!!! However, if he uses it like he would use a pay phone, a post card, or a clear radio transmission. With the clear understanding that “it will be intercepted” with absolute certainty, then I think he should be able to keep it. I agree the issue of PRA is absolute nonsense all emails go through the BES and the exchange servers which need to be recorded anyways.

With these requirements a small company must start out as a sub-contractor, establish a relationship with an “inside company” before they can ever establish a facility clearance of their own in order to bid on a contract requiring cleared personnel. It quickly becomes clear how the current NISP clearance requirements creates a serious impediment to small businesses to break into the industry. This is a seriouse contributing factor to why we are left with a handful of Super-contractors (GD, LM, SAIC, CSC, etc..) who effective rule the the DOD contracting world. Small and Disadvantaged Businesses (SDB) effectively become servants of the giants. SDB B.S. a subject of a whole other blog.

Not one to defend the contractor world, but this is a government created mess. The contracts are written so that to perform/charge any labor to the contract, an employee must be properly cleared. It is not just the cost of getting the employee cleared, but the overhead costs of keeping the employee on the books while the investigation is being conducted.

To make things worse (for small companies) th National Industrial Security Program (NISP) requires that new companies establishing a security facility clearance must have a sponsor (i.e. a company already possessing a facility clearance) and must have an active contract requiring a facility clearance—a seemingly circular problem.

As a prior hiring manager for a DOD contractor, I can say that finding and placing cleared individuals is both a critical task and a strategic effort in the contract capture phase.

At the beginning of one contract I was involved with, during the hiring phase, HR provided us with about 5,000 resumes of “qualified” individuals. The first thing we did was move those with clearances to one side of the desk and moved all the other resumes (more than half) into the trash.

This is not the exception, this is the rule among contractors. It is absolutely cost prohibitive to even consider uncleared candidates—you just can't be “competitive”. The bottom line is that over half of the pool of qualified candidates go into the trash before the contractor picks up the phone to start the interviews; disqualifying some darn good candidates.