Obama Finally Ditches BlackBerry, Switches To Samsung Galaxy S4 (arstechnica.com)

Obama has finally been able to ditch his BlackBerry handset, something which he was stuck with for more than six years. Mr. President appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and told the audience that it was only this year that he was able to get a real smartphone. There's one caveat, though. The Android smartphone Obama has gotten is a "hardened" version, with pretty much all the unrequired features removed from it. Laughing with the audience, Obama said, the phone feels like the fake toy handset kids play with. ArsTechnica, citing documentations, claim that Obama is using a Samsung Galaxy S4 (a phone that was released in 2013), as it is the only smartphone currently supported by the Defense Information Systems Agency. From the report: The S4 is currently the only device supported under DISA's DOD Mobility Classified Capability-Secret (DMCC-S) program. In 2014, a number of Samsung devices were the first to win approval from the National Security Agency under its National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) program -- largely because of Samsung's KNOX security technology. And the S4, layered with services managed by DISA, is the first commercial phone to get approval to connect to the Secret classified DOD SIPRNet network. DISA has been working with vendors and the National Security Agency's Information Assurance Directorate to develop a Top Secret-capable mobile device for use by the Defense Department and the national leadership both on the move and within secure facilities. But currently, the highest level of classification that can be handled by commercial devices under the DMCC program is at the Secret level. Secretary of State John Kerry was a DMCC-S early adopter, and he served as a beta tester of the hardened Galaxy S4.

Comments

Re:Cool

[smooth wombat]

Yes, yes there is and it has been used to great effect to wipe out succeeding "leaders" within the Daesh terrorist organization.

It's been so effective Daesh is turning against itself in a frenzied attempt to find out if there are spies among their ranks because their people keep dying so frequently.

Desertions are up, territory keeps getting lost, and terrorists keep getting killed, all thanks to the Drone Strike app. Available now for Apple and Android devices.

Re: Are foreign devices fully secure?

[rtb61]

For one just clusterfuck jet (F35), they could build the plant to make the phones needed for all government officials, just one less clusterfuck jet that will in the end be scrapped. So no excuse, they need smart phones, than build the infrastructure to make those phones. Than they could export, those security, milspec phones to the rest of the world, oh wait, no one trust the US government any more, well, that at least could provide it to all US agencies.