MSNBC:
Sorry, Mr. President. Please surrender your BlackBerry.
Those are seven words President-elect Barack Obama is dreading but expecting to hear, friends and advisers say, when he takes office in 65 days.
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Whenever Bush went on his ranch, which he did often, are there records of Bush's telephone calls and the people he met on his ranch?
Is there no way to use automated PGP encryption on a blackberry like you can on most e-mail programs?
I'm sure he can also set up a personal e-mail that is not official business and thus not subject to open records requests. Removing such an important tool as basic e-mail from the President of the United States is ludicrous.
The one problem I can see with the blackberry is the ability most governmental agencies have to track cell phones, which could be used by some nut to track his location. He may have to give up the crackberry, but for goodness sake, let him keep e-mail.
There is a reason they are called "Crackberries". We all have our technology additions...
He is concerned because of early cancellation fee? :)
This is absurd. The Pentagon and the NSC have secure data networks, and it's about time the White House does, too. This is exactly why Obama is hiring a CTO for his administration.
Hey, I'm from Detroit so I know first hand thanks to our clown ex-Mayor...
type it like the world is reading it...they just might.
From a personal security point of view, it could potentially be used against him!
Some security "experts" never learn!
because of what it represents culturally i'd like to see obama's blackberry donated to the smithsonian. it would make a great historical artifact.
by now everyone has seen or used a blackberry.....Smithsonian does not need more junk
NOT OWNED BY THE FIRST BLACKBERRY PRESIDENT!
Give it up Barack, it could potentially come back to bite you....ask Kwame. Not saying you'll do the same thing but remember, no messages are private.
A la Palin -- has 2 -- one supposedly for gov and one personal. Seen in photos. We also already know she's used private email for government work. Hacked and proven. Still awaiting her to be charged on it though, which she should. Same a la Cheney et al. Both tried 'deleting' like that works!! One bad apple...
Give him a Government Issue Blackberry, with the understanding to himself, and to others that might contact President Obama, that all communications on it are subject to public record requests. In that sense he would be like anybody else that uses a Government computer system as part of their job.
Same legal, ethical, and lack of right to privacy restrictions placed on all other Government systems. Many of us Civil Servants deal with these issues every day. The idea isn't exactly complicated.
How about just making sure that whatever server is servicing his Blackberry has good content filters, a tight list of E-mails he can receive messages from, an equally tight list of E-mails he can send out to? I'm sure the IT guys can figure out a way to make a system like this work for him.
Hey, he's now the decider... he can decide to keep using it and tell everyone else go to stuff it.
sound familiar???
If Obama doesn't want to go the way of every other President who gets put in a bubble cut off from the outside world, he'd better find a way to stay in touch with it. It might help that he has a grounded wife and two kids in school. But enough of these guys disappearing into the White House coming out the other end not knowing the price of gas, for God sake. If they can put a man on the moon why the hell can't they implement something that allows Presidents to remain human instead of becoming puppets or robots.
Then you shouldn't have run for office mister.
they can pry it out of my cold dead hands!
Blackberry is lame. I am surprised reporters/journalists use it on a regular basis. Don't they all have their own messaging system in their data center? Why would they want to go through the blackberry network? Aren't they concerned about the confidentiality, non-repudiation and integrity of the emails they receive? I mean how Obama knows if an email actually came from David Axelrod, if anyone read that email in transit and if the content was changed or not?
Microsoft Exchange seems to be the big player in the corporate messaging environment. Reporters, journalist and politicians should use a cell phone that supports active sync and directly access their email system securely.
I hope Obama sets an example and start using emails, blogs and *tube mediums to keep in touch with the public. We are transferring billions of dollars around world using the internet on a daily basis. We can have our president safely communicate with the outside world. Yes We Can!
This Canadian says he can keep his blackberry...it served him well during the campaign.
PKI certs. We use them in the DoD to digitally sign all e-mails on Blackberries.
Does RIM just pass these traffic to blackberry phones or do they open, inspect, repackage and send the packets out to the phones? How RIM deals with the IDS if you can use PKI?
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First Posted: 11-15-08 11:06 PM | Updated: 12-16-08 05:12 AM