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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..
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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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?
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?
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.
Apparently a BlackBerry was good enough for the president -- what's not clear is why it wasn't good enough for the secretary of state.
It already had the NSAKEY built in...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
A BlackBerry was *not* good enough for the President. A one-off highly modified, custom device that looks and mostly works like BlackBerry was.
I think the NSA was like: "We hated doing this, but if the President gets this, we can at least get away with saying it is a one-off. If we give it to Clinton, every cabinet member and every person who thinks they are as important as a cabinet member is going to want one. Also, the President is our boss and we have to kiss his ass. She's not our boss, so fuck her entitled ass."
Secure equipment is no joke. It's understandable that no one wants a shitty, overpriced Windows CE phone, but it would be even more expensive to just ignore the program and give everyone what they want, creating one-offs for whoever. These are supposed to be civil *servants*.
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've worked for a government contractor before.
Yes, the toilet seat costs $5,000.
However, every last one of the $5,000 toilet seats will be free from unknown defects, meet the 20-page list of design requirements, fit every model of toilet the government requires (including those from other contractors who won't release their proprietary contracted design spec), be constructed from US-supplied materials by US workers, and every minute of each worker's time will be properly recorded and billed, including the time spent ensuring that the time was recorded correctly, and all of those details will be documented in the truckload of paperwork that accompanies each seat.
That truck driver also gets paid.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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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Why doesn't the US government spec out a secure phone? They can specify the hardware and software and ensure it meets all their needs perfectly. And then have some (friend of the government) contractor make half a million of them (for a high price).
The FBI seems to think that iPhones are completely unhackable even with all of the resources of the US government, so that might be a good place to start.
The toilet seat is a quote from a movie (Independence Day?) where the president becomes aware of a secret base (at Area 51 or something) and asks how they manage to keep it invisible to the presidents office and government budgets. The $5000 toilet seat is the answer.
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When you order 87 toilet seats that conform to the inside of a B2, you have to pay for all the tooling required to make the toilet. Which is usually amortized over hundreds of thousands of units.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
UMMM, they did. Did you not even read the summary? they have two phones at the time that adhered to that spec.