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The White House Finally Got Color Printers (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous reader quotes an article on Gizmodo: Everyone loves an upgrade -- even POTUS. The New York Times reports that the White House has recently undergone a technological transformation, though it may not sound too impressive to many of us: Its employees are now equipped with modern laptops, iPhones and even... color printers. [...] Employees have new computers with "fast, solid-state drives and modern processors," according to the newspaper, along with color printers. There's a new phone system and many staff now tote iPhones. The Wi-Fi has been upgraded, so it's now fast enough to live-stream video. And security has been increased too, with a new software system for managing visitors and a chip-based card system which is used by staffers instead of passwords.

13 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Where was the hardware made? by known_coward_69 · · Score: 2

    this is probably for non-secure work. the classified gear has it's own separate network and their own standards

  2. Re:A chip based card system by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's chip and PIN -- not as bad as the summary made it sound.

  3. Re:Where was the hardware made? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Queue the "Opps I lost the emails" v2.0.

    I doubt that will ever happen again after the Bush Administration lost 22 million emails.

    The Bush White House email controversy surfaced in 2007 during the controversy involving the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys. Congressional requests for administration documents while investigating the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys required the Bush administration to reveal that not all internal White House emails were available, because they were sent via a non-government domain hosted on an email server not controlled by the federal government. Conducting governmental business in this manner is a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, and the Hatch Act. Over 5 million emails may have been lost. Greg Palast claims to have come up with 500 of the Karl Rove emails, leading to damaging allegations. In 2009, it was announced that as many as 22 million emails may have been lost.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy

  4. Re:Where was the hardware made? by Lumpy · · Score: 2

    Creatively? effortlessly. HP laser printers can run code to spy on things, and if someone was able to slap a tiny extra board in there each printer could simply capture the print job and send it elsewhere disguised as harmless packets or sit and wait for the printer to be returned on it's lease to give up it's goodies, or transmit out of band, etc....

    Copy machines were compromised like this a LOT. Just read the NSA archives on what they have found in our embassy's around the world as well as american offices.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  5. Next WH advance will be to not use printers at all by JoeyRox · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why are they printing stuff when they all have laptops and tablets?

  6. Will they trash it if a Republican wins? by tomhath · · Score: 2

    The way the Clinton staffers did when they left?

    1. Re:Will they trash it if a Republican wins? by Etcetera · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah, that turned out to be a myth. I'm sure some pranks happened, but relatively little, compared to the normal and routine wear and tear in offices.

      Well, except not: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02360.pdf

      Damage, theft, vandalism, and pranks occurred in the White House
      complex during the 2001 presidential transition. Incidents such as the
      removal of keys from computer keyboards; the theft of various items; the
      leaving of certain voice mail messages, signs, and written messages; and
      the placing of glue on desk drawers clearly were intentional acts. However,
      it was unknown whether other observations, such as broken furniture,
      were the result of intentional acts, when and how they occurred, or who
      may have been responsible for them.

    2. Re:Will they trash it if a Republican wins? by johncandale · · Score: 2

      thats what fucktard Bush gets for losing the electatoral college and the popular vote and not conceding.

  7. Re:Next WH advance will be to not use printers at by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    We've been promised the paperless revolution for like 20 years now. But paper has been around for thousands of years and isn't going anywhere soon.

    I work in government IT. We're so paperless that I have to bring in my own pens and Post-It notes. We do get a paper calendar handed out at the beginning of each year.

  8. Re:Where was the hardware made? by brainstem · · Score: 2

    probably just to sprinkle them around, like your apostrophe's.

  9. Re:This will cost extra for no reason by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Funny

    99% of the stuff that needs to be printed does not need color.

    Are you kidding? Have you ever seen a Powerpoint presentation printed in B&W? It's horrible. All of those important colored bars, dots and lines just blend into a sea of low contrast grey. It's bad enough when the data is just financial reports from a Fortune 500 company, but this is the highest level of the US government.

    Just think if somebody printed out a map of the Middle East in B&W. It would be hard to differentiate borders - you might end up starting WWIII because you blew up the wrong country.

    No, color in this case is cheap. The world has too many shades of grey as it is.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  10. Re:Where was the hardware made? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    These are probably specially ordered. The normal ones print little yellow dots that let law enforcement identify the source of print outs. You can bet the Whitehouse ones have that disabled.

    Fully vetted and spyware/backdoors removed by the NSA no doubt.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  11. Re:WiFi? by Orestesx · · Score: 2

    What good is a computer that is not connected to the internet? I see this suggestion all the time to air gap important stuff. But how do you expect to get anything interesting on or off the computer? Sure, if it's blueprints for an atomic bomb or missile launch codes, then air gap it. But what about intelligence briefings that need to be reviewed? Documents regarding military strategy? If people can't access this stuff, then it might as well not exist.