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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?
Yeah, pretty much. Couldn't she have escalated to Obama, though?
"Hi Barak, can you tell me how you got your BB? Cause the NSA is making me WinCE"
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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?
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.
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.
It already had the NSAKEY built in...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
She had her personal server already set up before this whole thing with the NSA.
The personal email server was clearly about avoiding FOIA requests and not a reaction to the NSA refusing to give her an expensive device.
I'd post links in support of my claims, but last time I posted about Hillary and email with lots of references, I got moderated Troll. So I'll just post it anonymously without references.
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.
She had her personal server already set up before this whole thing with the NSA.
The personal email server was clearly about avoiding FOIA requests and not a reaction to the NSA refusing to give her an expensive device.
I'd post links in support of my claims, but last time I posted about Hillary and email with lots of references, I got moderated Troll. So I'll just post it anonymously without references.
I have as well and not only on this forum. But why not post refs even if you're anon?
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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."
...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.
why not post refs even if you're anon?
Just angry, I guess. I never troll... that's deliberately wasting other peoples' time and I don't think that's funny. Being falsely slapped down for trolling makes me less willing to go the extra mile and write solid posts with references.
But I'll start pretending to be a grownup again. Here are some references.
"clintonemail.com" was registered on January 13 2009, 8 days before she was confirmed as Secretary of State.
https://sharylattkisson.com/hillary-clintons-email-the-definitive-timeline/
NSA email discussion was in February 2009.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/emails-show-nsa-rejected-hillary-clinton-request-for-secure-smartphone/
Q.E.D. She did not set up clintonemail.com as a response to not getting a secure phone; she set it up for some other reason. And I can't prove what she was thinking but the obvious one is to dodge FOIA requests.
She has claimed that she went to the unusual trouble of setting up her own personal email server because she wanted the convenience of carrying only one device; she must have forgotten that she already said, in public, that she routinely carries an iPad, an iPad Mini, an iPhone, and a Blackberry.
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/03/11/hillary-clinton-last-month-i-have-an-ipad-a-mini-ipad-an-iphone-and-a-blackberry/
What's a security waver? Does it move it up and down, or from side to side?
At the bottom of the
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.
Tear down? You mean dismount the mold from the injection machine? SO HARD it might take four or even six bolts!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Forgive my for being naive, but when did the terrorists break into her email?
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.
This. I work in aerospace. We turn a 10 cent screw into a $10 screw because of the QA, Flam & Cert needed. You don't even want to know how much a sticker that says No Smoking costs to put on an airplane.
Be glad it's this way. You don't want to be stuck in a metal tube with fire.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Yes, six bolts... And a person using a wrench, and a supervisor to assign the task and manage the person with the wrench, and a contract manager to ensure that the job was done, and a material supervisor to take the government-funded mold and ship it to a government storage facility, and of course that truck driver, too, and the accountants to make sure all of the costs are properly documented.
It'd be a lot cheaper if the government didn't require contracts to be so thorough, but in an effort to completely eliminate fraud, government contracts require excessive attention to detail, and that drives up the cost of every step of the process. There are a good number of companies out there that simply refuse to do government business, for exactly that reason... and a large number of contractor companies who exist solely to deal with the bureaucracy and pass the actual work on to subcontractors.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
It's the disinterested customer that costs the money. The contractor will bill whatever they can get away with.
Good thing they're trying to outlaw encryption! The Government will save so much money by no longer needing secured devices.