Purism is pleased to announce that long-time mobility industry insider Randy Siegel has joined the company to direct our strategic government business development efforts.
“Adding Randy to lead our secure mobile offering is a natural fit to expand our governmental focused Liberty Phone manufactured at our facility on US Soil. We are extremely excited that Randy is joining our team!” — Todd Weaver, Founder & CEO of Purism.
Mr. Siegel is based in Washington, D.C. and has over thirty years of communications and IT experience with a focus on small form-factor computing in both enterprise and contested environments. He has held corporate positions such as Microsoft’s US federal government mobile lead and Motorola Solution’s main go-to-market proponent of a hardware-based cryptographic engine addressing Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) use cases and others. He’s also a veteran of MCI Telecommunications (now Verizon) and General Electric.
Since 2013, Siegel has directed a boutique, government-focused mobility advisory service called Center Circle Consultants which serves both government directly as well as Industry.
Siegel also serves as Principal, Mobility and Wireless Technologies for Deep Water Point Consulting and Associates and is on the advisory boards of multiple organizations, including Armstar, Ozzi Development, KoolSpan, ATARC’s Industry Board, and several others.
Known for his nuanced touch, deep relationships, and trustworthiness, Siegel has helped shape the complex federal mobile ecosystem with his well-honed understanding of government mission goals, requirements, and assessed outcomes.
“I believe that the Purism model – stressing privacy, security, and freedom – is perfectly suited for government use cases. We are talking about dependency on a secure, government-first, mobile device to achieve mission goals, be they tactically focused in the field or enterprise-focused for knowledge workers in an office. For GFE (Government Furnished Equipment), it’s ridiculous and a bit scary that government employees, military, and members of our Intelligence Community are forced to rely on Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) consumer devices that are increasingly collecting data on their every move, every communication, every step.”
Siegel continues, “when I first focused on smartphones in the early 2000s, the attack surface was much smaller and the pernicious practice of data harvesting by so-called big-tech on the device was much less of a factor. This all changed after 2007, with the twin announcements of the iPhone and Google’s Open Handset Alliance (which resulted in Android).
Google doesn’t sell search engines; they sell advertising. They think of every device as a potential sensor and/or collector for more data harvesting and manipulation.
Apple has what we used to call in pre-Internet days a ‘walled garden’ approach. Unfortunately, no one knows what is done with the users’ data. More to the point, why should we as individual citizens and government employees be dependent on the whims of big tech to safeguard our privacy?
It’s about time that the government be offered a meaningful choice in terms of smartphones. With Purism, you not only get a device fabricated in the United States, but one that also could meet the high bar for certain government security requirements across multiple classifications. I’m super excited to get started with Purism and believe offering government and Industry a choice helps all parties – taxpayers included.”
Purism is a US based Social Purpose Corporation. The company was started for the purpose of providing customers with a real choice in terms of a privacy/security first computers and later smartphones: A device that allows you to communicate and interact effectively without all the baggage and overhead of traditional large technology companies.
Founder and CEO Todd Weaver commented, “We believe people should have technology that fully respects their freedoms. Being a social purpose company means doing social good for society before maximizing profits, and that makes us quite a different company indeed.”
Purism makes high quality, safe, and secure hardware and software available to everyday users. It started in 2014 by crowdfunding a 15-inch laptop with a quarter million-dollar funding goal. Since then, it has built a sophisticated portfolio of digitally responsible products, services, and tech add-ons that focus on privacy and freedom. Purism envisions a future safe from digital exploitation and a secure and respectful environment for everyone.
For more information contact marketing@puri.sm