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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."
The Prez doesn't have a cellphone?
Seems like using a portable femtocell and a private relay to some central government location would be enough to mitigate the problem. And besides, don't the secret service carry cell phones?/ If you can't track the prez, just track the people around him.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
That may not be enough for most devices out there. You'll probably also have to take out the battery, and even then there could be an internal battery that keeps the tracking going. Your best bet, whenever you don't want people to track you through your cell phone, would be to smash it to bits, or coat it in honey and feed it to a bear.
eeeevery device has an "off" ;)
I wouldn't worry too much about it. The #1 thing that is going to guarantee his security is this- if he dies, Biden becomes president. Just put a few adds on TV stating this and he'll be the safest man in the world.
Or leave it at home?
Let's remember how important it is to have a president who is not overly insulated by yes-men. He needs direct communication with the outside world. Sure we could lock him in a lead box under the Pentagon if our top priority was keeping him "safe" but what good is that?
Even if it happens to be in the form of a really big sledgehammer with the word "OFF" emblazoned on it?
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POTUS: Hello?
Caller: Hi. Do you have...uh...like Prince Albert in a can?
POTUS: Excuse me?
Caller: Wait! I mean...is your refrigerator running? Could you like go and check it?
POTUS: How did you get this number? Who is this?
Caller: Uh...this is Haywood. Haywood Jablo-
Click.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
They don't think he's already got a tracking device on him at all times anyway? It's calls "several dozen Secret Service agents." Pretty hard to miss, honestly.
coat it in honey and feed it to a bear.
No good, the bear will follow you around looking for more handouts. In the meantime operatives are tracking the bear.
Seriously, this is just another case of illogical fear of "new" technologies. It is already easy to track him: just look for the long motorcade.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
But then you have a bear to help you deal with the operatives
I don't think they ever could have sussed it out without the phone. It's not like the giant airplane, motorcades, helicopters, press pool, and army of Secret Service agents are a dead giveaway. The man can't even take a piss without a humorless man in black sunglasses whispering into his wrist.
If there are any vulnerabilities to be found here, no doubt there will be hackers looking into it and making it public knowledge for the notoriety, just like they do with Microsoft. The holes will be plugged, new research paid for, and I think we can all rest assured that wireless security will be all the more advanced from his eight years in office.
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This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Well then feed it to a rat and get your ass to Mars.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
... is much less important, from a personal security standpoint, than knowing where he's going to be.
#DeleteChrome
So let's imagine someone did actually manage to track the President using his Blackberry. Now that person could plan an assassination based on the Presiden't location? How is that more useful than knowing he'll be in location X at time Y based on a press release, or a public event?
The last link supposedly discusses the "risks" of a "trackable" President by supposing some would-be assassin could tell if the President was in the White House, or which car he was in out of several choices. Wouldn't this assassin be better off waiting for a public rally where the President's attendance, location (and probably the time of his attendance) are public knowledge?
This just strikes me as wild speculation with a healty dose of paranoia. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm sure a hundred people will now cite many examples of how this could lead to "another JFK". Fire away people...
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
U.S. Presidents have had subcutaneous tracking implants for some time now.
Given a bit of technical savvy, those are no different when it comes to anyone being able to locate the Pres.
In addition, you could strip him of tech hardware completely and the plethora of social indicators easily associated with his daily routine would still light him up like a Shenzhen cathouse.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
so having dealt successfully with Ursa Minor.....here comes Ursa Major....and she's pissed!
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
in which case, we need gorillas to take care of the snakes. and that's the beautiful part. when wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
He most likely has both, as Obama has been seen using a blackberry while president: http://i.gizmodo.com/5144129/the-secrets-of-obamas-email
I mean, turn it off if you're trying to sneak around?
The article mentioned one 'threat': that the SS driving around a limo pretending to contain the president while he arrives quietly in a different car, saying that the GSM chip would give away the 'right' car.
Except that the ruse would work even better by putting the real phone in the fake car and driving that around. Do we believe the SS didn't already think of this?
... the driver simply turned on his cell phone and threw it in the luggage bin of a Greyhound bus. The cops were hundereds of miles off course by the time they found out.
I think that may be unrealistic. Last time I looked (a LONG time ago) the luggage bin of a greyhound bus appeared to be a pretty good Faraday cage.
Basic concept is good though. (Yes they can and do hunt down federal fugitives, serial killers, and the like by tracking the cellphone location when it's just turned on.) Just don't turn it on and throw it in a sealed metal box: They'll zero in on where you turned it on and go from there.
The trick was also used in The Da Vinci Code, where the lead finds the tracking device and drops it onto a passing garbage truck. This is followed by a Keystone Cops / O. J. Simpson style car chase of the truck.
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But then the bad guys would be able to find the secret location of the White house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.
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there is no such thing as personal use
what i mean by that is, any communication of yours meant to be private that can be intercepted and used against you is a national security concern. there is a reason his daughters have secret service agents: someone could hurt his children, or threaten to hurt them, and by extension, influence national policy. his communication with them by extension is vulnerable to interception, manipulation, etc. all sorts of fascinating psychological data about the president can be gleaned form his "private" communications on a common network, no matter how "secure". if he really is still using a well-known network for private vulnerable communications, you bet your ass foreign espionage services are stumbling over themselves getting their hands on those messages to mine for intelligence and psychological angles to work on the president
i would be incredibly surprised if obama was allowed to use any common carrier or protocol, even the relatively secure blackberry, the keys to which are owned by a canadian, ie, foreign, company. you really think they would let him do that? you really think obama himself isn't mindful of this threat?
no. i really would be hard pressed to believe obama is using a plain old blackberry. and if not a sectera, then a modded and retooled blackberry on a completely different network using a completely different protocol. doesn't have to be james bond Q type gadgetry, just something unique to the federal government and guarded by nsa spooks. because ALL of his communications, including his "private" ones, are that vital to national security
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
An antire group of people devoted to tracking and reporting on the whereabouts of the president. They could hire pundits to theorize on why he is there, film him getting in the car, getting out of the car. They could even predict where he's going to be, like "The president will be in Miami next Tuesday to talk to the guy in that place". Now that would be really freaky.
because he and his cohorts knew what they were talking about was a political liability. there's not protection from a president who is keeping secrets from his own people. that's an entirely different scenario than a president engaging in personal but politically harmless communications
"Your fantasies about foreign spies gaining "fascinating psychological data" from his email that isn't available from his books or non-scripted speaking events is fun, but simply that, fantasy."
so there's no dedicated teams in the cia right now gleaning every little snippet of information they can get their hands on any way possible about hu jintao? ahmadinejad? bin laden? putin?
and russia, or china: they'll just stick to watching c-span to find out about obama?
i wished i were that clueless and naive. the world would be such a cotton candy place
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That may not be enough for most devices out there. You'll probably also have to take out the battery, and even then there could be an internal battery that keeps the tracking going. Your best bet, whenever you don't want people to track you through your cell phone, would be to smash it to bits, or coat it in honey and feed it to a bear.
Take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
I am not a crackpot.
When I last worked in the White House in the '90s certain senior staff had a little device that constantly updated with the President's location from WHCA.
This is a silly discussion.
You can't hide the U.S. President in his daily business. It's just impossible. Motorcades, helicopters, public speeches, platoons of serious men in dark suits... the dude wins the prize for Most Obvious Man in America. forget about it.
Now, if the President *wants* to hide, he goes to a secure bunker somewhere where the radio waves don't shine, somewhere that even the sneakiest guy with an antenna can't get within ten miles of.
Exactly! And by "exactly", I mean completely wrong.
They might know where he is when he's home, but it's all about subtlety when he's out and about. What about when he sneaks out in a secret motorcade with only 923 vehicles with flashing lights followed by dozens of members of the press with cellphones up the wazoo who track his every move 24/7? Or when he sneaks out in a flight of several helicopters with highly obvious markings? Or a Boeing 747 with an obvious paint-job and "I'm the fucking president, feel my power bitches" written on the side? Nobody can track him then.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
"The big ass plane with the unique paint job, the helicopters with the presidential seal, the convoy of black Escalades, all those are kinda big giveaways."
Well... actually, there are TWO Air Force Ones. The Marine One HMX-1 squadron consists (IIRC) of 28 birds, and most POTUS transport missions fly three identical whitebacks in an aerial shell game. And there are often multiple convoys of Escalades and Cadilac limos.
So which plane? Which helicopter? Which convoy? Which limo? There's a difference between knowing where he is in a general sense, and in exactly which vehicle he's being transported.
Besides, all of those "kinda big giveaways" you mentioned also make kinda big decoys. Just because they're there doesn't mean HE'S there...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
No good, the bear will follow you around looking for more handouts.
Sounds about like the American voter. Or banking industry. Or auto industry. Or state & local governments.
Vote Quimby.