The Government Procurement Administration recently approved an upgrade of the mobile phones of 2,000 senior civil servants at government ministries, the Israel Police, Israel Security Agency, Mossad, and Israel Prison Service, to Apple's iPhone 4.
Hebrew daily "Yediot Ahronot" today reports that a survey of Ministry of Finance officials found that 500 iPhone 4s were distributed to senior public servants within a few days.
"Have you upgraded to the iPhone 4?" is the most frequently asked question among ministers, MKs, and senior civil servants nowadays. Ministers already addicted to the iPhone include Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Yaalon, Minister of Environmental Protection Gilad Erdan, and Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Yuli Edelstein. Minister of Tourism Stas Misezhnikov and other ministers are due to get an iPhone 4 soon.
The problem is that when ministers attend the weekly cabinet meeting or a security cabinet meeting, they are supposed to leave their cellphones at the door, and not bring them into the meeting, to prevent phone tapping. But the ministers find it difficult to part with their iPhones. Some of them sneak their iPhones into meetings in order to leak information, or simply because they cannot stop playing "Angry Birds".
And what does Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu carry? He goes around with a Sony Ericsson T707 cellphone, and has not yet asked for an upgrade to an iPhone.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 21, 2011
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