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Obama Keeps His Blackberry (And Gets a Sectera)
InternetVoting writes "After all the controversy surrounding Obama's Blackberry, word has come that he will get to keep it. Few details are available and neither the National Security Agency nor the White House are talking. The current rumor is that the Blackberry will be used exclusively for personal use and a Sectera Edge will be used for official communications."
Kinda like rnc.org for personal use and whitehouse.gov for official communications?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
The main reason for the President himself to not to have something like a personal BlackBerry or other personal communications devices -- ones which is he is publicly known to have, anyway -- is simply the high-profile nature and symbolism of the target. It doesn't matter that other federal agencies and the military use them for one purpose or another.
This is the case even with all the compelling "finger on the pulse of [insert subject du jour here]" and Information Age tempo arguments. The fact is that the President will have an army of aides who can all have their fingers directly on the multitude of things that the President cares about and needs to know about.
And in the event that a case is made, internal to the administration, that the President -- now or in the future -- really needs to have his own personal communications device(s), that fact in itself -- not to mention the specific equipment and carriers -- doesn't need to be, and, frankly, shouldn't be, publicly disclosed.
Also, from the article:
This is for a variety of reasons, but security is not necessarily one of them. For example, an IM service offered by the DNI's Intelligence Community Enterprise Solutions group does provide instant messaging services using the open Jabber protocol up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level.
Since Obama is commander in chief of the military shouldn't he be able to use the same technology (Blackberry) they use? If our national defense is entrusted to a product why would that not be good enough for the boss?
It turns out, that, after trashing Bush and Cheney for eight years for not making all of their communications public, the first thing the new Democratic President does is get for himself a means of making private communications based on his word that it will be for personal use only.
Frankly, I don't dispute the right of any President to have secret communications. He needs to be judged by his work product and not be constantly subject to the Congress. It was wrong for Republicans to harrass Clinton during his Presidency and it was wrong for Bush to be harrassed as well. IT's not because, ideally, the President is above the law, but it is because, he (or she!), is not subjugated to the Congress. They are equal branches of government.
This is my sig.
RIM gets an unlimited amount of free advertising over this being headline news for a month!
So was I. It's a "Secure Mobile Environment Portable Electronic Device", it's made by General Dynamics, and you can read more about it here.
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
The Washington Post had a truly idiotic story today entitled: "Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages" that seemed (to me) silly. Among the statements: " The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software." seemed the silliest in that it implies that six-year old software (WinXP?) is "old". The author needs to be told that just because newer is available doesn't mean there is a business sense to use it! From the article: "What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking." The young'uns should learn there are reasons to make those things unavailable. Like, uhhh, security? Think back to when Clinton took office and his minions were saying the same kinds of things about the WH phone system left by Bush 1...that is used "dial phones" (for christ's sake!)...and everything had to go through the WH switchboard. There was a reason for that as the Clintonites found when they "modernized". Suddenly the WH began leaking info like a sieve when the "new technology" was adopted. Watch for the same thing to happen here! For the record: I didn't vote for Obama or McCain but it seems like this article was another kick at GWB.
To put my comments in their proper context, it's a good idea to disclose that I'm Canadian.
Having said that, I understand the national security concerns with Obama using a Blackberry. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't all Blackberry traffic pass through RIM's servers in Waterloo, Ontario. Given the fact that such information can be intercepted on foreign soil should be worrisome to a U.S. security agency such as the NSA.
Other smartphones don't appear to have that problem. Perhaps the NSA can persuade Obama to get an iPhone instead? :D
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And now we are told that Obama 'promises' to only use his blackberry for personal communications. I am sure he has every good intention to comply, but, as with Palin, we see that routine use of personal assets while in a government job can lead to a confusion and misuse between the personal asset and government property. One can imagine Palin logged onto her yahoo account simply writing a government note because it was more efficient that logging into the proper account, or thinking that since she was staying in her own home on government business, that the taxpayers should help her pay her mortgage.
Which is to say that we cannot trust that our officials are always doing the right thing, no matter how moral or trustworthy we think they are. If Obama uses the blackberry, then it still has to fall under the FOIA. If that means we get hundreds of pages of 'thinking of you dear', that is fine. At least we will know that he is not plotting to defraud the American consumers by colluding with oil company executives.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
On Monday, a government agency that the Obama administration -- but that is probably the National Security Agency -- added to a standard blackberry a super-encryption package.... and Obama WILL be able to use it ... still for routine and personal messages.
Sentence goes -- but that isn't so... and someone WILL be -- understanding of this ... still better than me.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I know its not popular here, but if you RTFA and pay attention to other news sources, you'll find out that the NSA has modified Obama's Blackberry to the point that they are satisfied with it. Good enough for me.
all his communication to us would come in the form of burning Bushes and stone tablets
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If your wife was shooting you a text on your personal phone about waiting for you naked when you got home would want that sent out to a company wide distribution list. Give the man his personal belongings let him worry about using it properly and trust him a bit. I didn't even vote for the guy but this has been one of the stupidest arguments since the initial debates. We deal with this everyday at work, not on a grand scale like the presidency but the same principal, maybe worse we are always so scared of HIPAA around here.
I agree that Congress has multiply failed the American people, both for the reasons you cite and more. But Bush has also failed his responsibility to the American people and the US Constitution. It is reasonable to hold Bush personally responsible for the actions of his Administration. Unfortunately it makes no sense to hold Congress responsible as an institution. Each citizen must hold their representative to Congress personally responsible.
Unfortunately there are only 2 ways I can think of to investigate improprieties of a Presidential Administration, through a special prosecutor appointed by that or a later Administration, or by Congress. And only Congress has the power within the US to hold that Administration accountable.
Ultimately this is where Congress failed the American people most miserably. They failed to investigate the egregiously illegal and immoral acts of the Bush Administration, largely because the Democrats were afraid of the same quagmire that befell the Reublicans after the Clinton impeachment hearings.
To hear people on Slashdot talk positively about marketing / sales people. In any other case, you'd have a dozen posts about "those stupid sales weenies told some stupid president that we have to make this thing 'secure' and do it in 3 days with no extra help".
What those whining programmers sometimes fail to see is sometimes the sales/marketing staff know what they are doing. If I was RIM management, I sure as hell wouldn't want to loose the president as a client, bitching programmers be damned.