The Real Risks of Obama's BlackBerry

An anonymous reader writes "When the mainstream media first announced Barack Obama's 'victory' in keeping his BlackBerry, the focus was on the security of the device, and keeping the US president's e-mail communications private from spies and hackers. The news coverage and analysis by armchair security experts thus far has failed to focus on the real threat: attacks against President Obama's location privacy, and the potential physical security risks that come with someone knowing the president's real-time physical location. In this article, a CNET blogger digs into the real risks associated with the President carrying around a tracking device at all times."

Comments

i don't think obama has a blackberry

[circletimessquare]

i think he has a sectera edge, which is a sort of military grade blackberry. as such, you can bet he is immune from the kind of attack mentioned in the summary

slashdot noted this already, with the rumor that he has a blackberry and a sectera. this is absurd because:

1. the sectera has civilian and military network abilities, so it would be doubly redundant to have both a blackberry and sectera, since a sectera is pretty much already a blackberry+

2. since we are talking about top level extremely sensitive communications, rumors about the reality of his communication device is all any of us will hear about, as a rule. and probably with purposeful misdirection about what obama is actually using thrown in to boot: let the yokels believe what they want to believe about his communication device and the "stories" aka myths about him keeping his blackberry. uh huh. anyone, anywhere, writing about what obama is using is either guessing or lying. the more the certainty and conviction they have about what his communication device is, the sillier they are. the only people who know for sure what obama is communicating with on the go are probably a few tight-lipped spooks at the nsa. and if they talk, they are about to lose their job and are going to be heavily prosecuted about disclosing obviously extremely senstive national security details of obama's mobile communication situation. all obama cares about is the convenience of qwerty keyboard email on the go in a cellphone. switch a real blackberry with a sectera edge, he is happy. he's married to the convenience, not an actual brand of device

3. but i think most convincingly, when someone talks about obama keeping his "blackberry", i think they are using the word "blackberry" the way some people use "xerox": that is, like the word xerox has become a rough synonym for copying a piece of paper, i think blackberry is so ubiquitous now, any shiny brick with a full qwerty keyboard can be called a "blackberry" in common parlance, or soon will be. that's all the sectera edge is: a blackberry rip off with ultrahigh security. and that's most probably what obam is using

Re:i don't think obama has a blackberry

[GeekZilla]

You are correct, it is a Sectera. I am a software engineer and am working on a web app for the dissemination of classified information on secure US networks. General Dynamics and the NSA worked together to create a mobile device that was both secure and rugged and it received final approval in late 2008. When that occurred, we began modifying our code to ensure it could run on the mobile device and even have one in the office for testing. After the election we learned that Obabma's "Blackberry" is really the GD Sectera or SME-PED.. There was one article that actually got it right soon after the election and turns out a news.google.com search for SME-PED reveals some good articles (I can't remember where I found the original article I referred to). From a Geek perspective, this is REALLY cool! Specs are freely available at the first link.