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NSA Suggested Clinton Use A $4,750 Windows CE PDA (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes from an article on Ars Technica: When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was pushing to get a waiver allowing her to use a BlackBerry like President Barack Obama back in 2009, the National Security Agency had a very short list of devices approved for classified communications. The General Dynamics' Sectera Edge and L3 Communications' Guardian were the two devices built for the Secure Mobile Environment Portable Electronic Device (SME PED) program. They were the only devices anyone in government without an explicit security waver (like the one the president got, along with his souped-up BlackBerry 8830) could use until as recently as last year to get mobile access to top secret encrypted calls and secure e-mail. At the time Clinton was asking for a phone, only the Sectera Edge was available (the Guardian was running behind in development) and it required multiple server-side and phone-side e-mail additions, desktop synchronization software, and other supporting products. The "Executive Kit" version of the Edge, priced for government purchase at $4,750, included: Type 1 Sectera Edge (GSM or CDMA) device plus: Executive Carry Case, Leather Holster Travel Charger, Red/Black USB Cables, Vehicle Charger, Earbud, Stylus 10-pack, microSD Card with User Manual, Spare Battery, Privacy Shield 4-pack, Antivirus Software, Apriva Email Client and Perpetual Rights fee and Office Suite for Windows CE.
It's totally safe; we totally can't hack it. Don't get one of those cheap devices, or an iPhone, because we'd be screwed.
"No.. I know better than the NSA. I'll use what *i* want and there's nothing you can do about it!"
And so far... shes right about that last part..
You don't really think they spend $5,000 on a toilet seat, do you?
After all, Microsoft hasn't been able to release anything secure.
2 turtle doves
So, the NSA basically told Clinton; Fuck you.
Nice. Personally I hate her, but the NSA should have more respect for the Secretary of State FFS.
Clinton didn't want to read her email on a computer in her SCIF...she wanted her BlackBerry. It was good enough for everyone else in the government, but it wasn't good enough for her.
This totally sounds like the NSA's IT people were just being dicks for the sake of being dicks, and like in many companies, when a C level exec gets screwed around by red tape they step around it. I mean FFS, they have "too many Blackberries" to manage but the POTUS gets one and the Secretary of State does not?
Damn, no wonder it was so expensive.
Have you read my blog lately?
she's a successful woman.
hillary asked to use a blackberry to communicate with her private home server. Also:
"Chief of staff Cheryl Mills lost her Blackberry in March 2010, a little over a year into Hillary’s tenure at State, which had been used with the unauthorized and non-secure homebrew Hillary server. "
Guess the next POTUS will be using an iPhone 7 - assuming Tim Cook prevails in the fight against the very government looking for approved devices. I guess too secure is a problem, no?
Life is not for the lazy.
Could we please not have US political party bickering fucktardation on slashdot? Go back to Fox News, maybe someone there gives a fuck about this artificial piece of who-gives-a-shit non-news brainfart.
"But I don't get to use the phone I want to use. WAAAAHHHH!!!!"
Cry me a river. I can't tell you how many Executive's want their "hip and cool" device. Getting what they want with these things is an addictive sexual experience for them.
She was offered an appropriate solution for the technology available at the time.
The facts of this case are Clintons E-mail server got good men and women killed. If she isn't prosecuted and put in prison, everyone in these agencies will understand there's a double standard at play, and none of the morals, ethics, or standards of conduct they are held to mean a damn because they are working for some rich old farts. That's a very dangerous precedent to set. Director level staff have threatened to walk if she is not prosecuted.
I'm having trouble locating the exact requirements the device had to fulfill to satisfy the SME PED program; but depending on what levels of physical tamper resistance and software quality assurance were involved, $4,750/unit for a fairly low volume device might actually be a pretty decent price.
Mainstream winCE devices were pretty much extinct, or in the later stages of twitching and gasping, by 2009; but as a point of comparison you could find yourself spending ~$500 for a high-end Pocket PC device back in the 2005ish period, sometimes without any sort of cellular connectivity and obviously without the SCIF mode and keyfill ports and stuff. Prices for equivalent hardware had certainly fallen in the mass market by 2009; but I'm guessing that this thing's development time left it with hardware much more akin to that of older models than to that of whatever cellphones were hot off the presses in 2009.
If the requirements were more about knowing how to land contracts and tick feature checkboxes, then the price is on the high side. If the "trusted" label on various parts of the device, and whatever modifications to stock WinCE were necessary to get safe coexistence of the high and low security sides of the device, imply a substantial amount of very exacting software development; then I'm actually more surprised that they cost that little.
Anyone know how these are supposed to stack up in EAL/CC/FIPS140-2 terms or any other measures that would be more helpful in drawing comparisons than membership in a group that only one other device was ever part of?
The math is simple. Even the VP is more important than SecState.
... to keep our national secrets secure and to keep the Sec. of State from subverting FOIA.
I worked in mobile telecom in 2009, I wrote code for Mobile Switching Centers (MSCs). We purchased that Windows Phone to verify that our equipment properly handled everything needed to allow all the protocols to work as required. The phone was just horrible. It was extremely unfriendly to use, it devoured batteries, and it had effectively zero application development going on for it. I seem to recall the hardware aspects of it were at least pretty sturdy.
And then they hit you up for the optional extended warranty.
Covers you for parts and labor beyond the current administration's term.
Have gnu, will travel.
..."naw...too expensive. To save that money, I'll just hire and IT guy, buy a server and some hosting services and to save even more money, I'll keep in a bathroom closet."
> NSA Suggested Clinton Use A $4,750 Windows CE PDA
> Windows CE
> Windows CE
> Windows CE
These monsters have no humanity.
...for the Secretary of State? As I've read this on Slashdot (which means I read some of the summary and comments, so I'm probably way off), I seem to remember that they only offered this phone and it was expensive.
First of all, does she have to buy it personally? That seems dumb, the Secretary of State is #4 in the line of succession and usually one of the highest profile members of the Federal Government and a phone using whatever's necessary to secure her communications isn't just standard?
I would think on orientation day it would be like first thing they give you after the coffee cup with 'WORLDS GREATEST SECRETARY OF STATE" and your door badge.
And if just her "office" has to buy it, is $5k some kind of major strain on the Secretary of States office budget? Was it like "oh shit, we stocked up on inkjet cartridges and K-cups and blew the budget?" or "Well shit, everyone got Aeron chairs and now we can't give the Secretary a secure phone."
State would have bought it for her, and she didn't want it. It's not like she couldn't have approved the expense.
You will get less than 20 Bruce Schneiers for 4 Millions.
Did it ever occur to you that the company making these Secure Phones will probably sell about 1000 pieces EVER ?
(Yes, 1000 will be a realistic number. In the bubble around the U.S. president there are certainly not more than 1000 people who will get this kind of secure device)
NSA told her to use a secure, uncool device.
But thanks for the typical leftist attempt to torture the truth until black is white and true==false.
We know your tactics and we will expose them.
If only Obama has the "secure devices", what is the utility of that ? Crypto devices are only useful if the other communication parties have crypto devices, too.
For example, if Merkel talks a lot about foreign policy with a senior member of parliament and the latter guy does not have a secured phone, it means little that Merkel has access to some crypto devices. At least regarding foreign policy.
Now, rinse repeat with military, finance, economics, internal police, intelligence and so on.
A rational (!) Communications System must equip hundreds of decisionmakers with Secure Communications Devices. The point probably is that the powers that be do not really want to secure their own politician's communications. Because that would make it hard for them to control them. And they give f*ck about the fact that even highest-level politicos like Clinton (she is already highest level) can be intercepted by foreign powers. As long as they are informed, this is acceptable to them.
That is the reason Clinton was allowed to run her own email server. You cannot tell me NSA did not know about this FOR YEARS. They knew and they did nothing.
This device was purpose-designed and built for highest level communications. Why did Clinton not have an aide carry it around for her ?
This story (actually THESE stories - this is the second here) smells of the typical Clinton Weaseling.
...on Slashdot. When was the last whitewashing story ? one or two days ago ?
...in order to give Sheeple some New Story, so that they will forget Hillary's Private And Illegal Email Server, processing secret messages.
You witness an Information Operation.
More than likely, the issue she had was the thing didn't fucking work for communicating with real humans every day.
For those of you too young to remember, Independence Day was refering to a scandal related to military pork in the early 90s. The military was downsizing after the cold war and a series of GAO reports to congress on what should be cut made easy pickings for muckraking journalists and underdog political candidates. Most of the "over-billed" made sense in context. A lot of it was for aviation, and made in small quantities, which is expensive because you don't get economies of scale.
The $5000 toilet seat was a real thing, I remember Barbara Walters reporting on it. It was expensive because it had to fit in the B52's unique toilet. They last 50 years and the government was only planning to keep a hundred or so of the planes... So a contractor had to build, set up and tear down an industrial mold for a production run of 20 units. That gets expensive.
Good to be reminded yet again that there is no free will on the left.
Hillary for Prison 2016
What's a security waver? Does it move it up and down, or from side to side?
At the bottom of the
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/nsa-refused-clinton-a-secure-blackberry-like-obama-so-she-used-her-own/
Snip:
"As I had been speculating, the issue here is one of personal comfort [Secretary Clinton] does not use a computer,"
Yeah, so in a time where technology issues are at arguably their most sensitive point, we need a cow who doesn't even use a freaking computer to lead us. You want intelligent and measured technology legislation? Chew on that.
It's not the machining the seats out of a solid billet of stainless steel that costs the money, it's all the paper that goes with that. Material inspection certs, accounting checks, etc.
There are monthly news of publicly available iOS and Android exploits that give attacker access to device data, location and microphone. NSA itself snooped on cell phone of German head of state. Do we really want a likelihood that foreign intelligence agencies and even resourceful journalists are able to eavesdrop on everything top US government officials do? And the newer and "smarter" a technology is, the harder it is to be confident that it doesn't contain security weaknesses. Windows CE was probably the right way to go at that time, apparently a modified Galaxy S4 is used now.
Or maybe she just removed the markings to send them in the clear.
Good thing they're trying to outlaw encryption! The Government will save so much money by no longer needing secured devices.