DOJ opposed to Blackberry shutdown

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a brief in the U.S. district court hearing the patent infringement case between RIM and the patent holder NTP, sharpening its opposition to a potential injunction against the Blackberry e-mail services that could affect numerous government users. Although NTP has claimed that such an injunction would not apply to government BlackBerry users, DOJ expresses doubts in its filing that NTP's plans for federal employees to be filtered out and kept connected, are realistic. The filing also provided a list of 138 government agencies and their related contractors, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Army and the National Security Agency that may need to be kept connected. As the government Blackberry users are about 200,000, both the Department of Justice and RIM have expressed concerns that an eventual shutdown may threaten national security. The DOJ suggested an injunction that will allow the network to be in operation, but will put an end to sales of new Blackberries to private users.

Source: BusinessWeek