It was very widely stated that Barack Obama was the more technology savvy of the two presidential candidates in the last US elections. Suzanne Goldenberg's piece here suggests that the Oval office has no need for such electronic communication and that president Obama will have to eschew the use of his Blackberry communications device as soon as he takes office in January 2009.
I find it not only surprising that the manufacturers of the device are prepared to let go of the suggestion that the Blackberry is insufficiently secure to qualify as a communication device for a president. While , I have read enough pieces from Bruce Schneier to know that no device is completely secure, I am still surprised that for all the technological capability of the US, the view that electronic communication is insecure is taken with little challenge.
To my mind, paper communications may be important for keeping records but there's no reason that electronic communications devices cannot have a similar facility or permanent record. It is in the interest of the firm that manufacturers and supplies the software for Blackberry to state this clearly by taking the challenge to pay US$ 1 million to anyone who could demonstrate that interception of communications from a given device (not the president's)was possible. Blackberry ought not to let the image of its product be that it is only good for a suave campaigner who must leave it aside as soon as elections are over. Taken to its most extreme, does this suggest that Blackberry's are only for the non-presidential and the losers. Thus far, it appears that only losers keep their Blackberry!
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In February, my BBerry died for a few hours, which sparked a similar debate. From BizTech:
13 February 2008
With most phones, you send a message and while it travels over the telecommunications company’s network, it has many ways of getting to the party you’re sending it to. BlackBerrys (and a few other phones) work differently. Before you receive an email on your BlackBerry, the message passes through tech equipment that RIM owns and operates. There’s no way to bypass this step. This was the reason France banned some government workers from using the devices earlier this year. The French were worried that spies would infiltrate RIM’s network-operation centers and read their messages.
But this system also creates worries for rational business people: If RIM has a problem, its customers bear the burden.
Good point Mark. But what this means is that Blackberry should rise to the challenge and encrypt data in transition and ensure that its software is stable and very secure. I admit that the fact that it passes through a known path makes it vulnerable for interceptors but that raises the premium on having proper encryption . In all, if the free marketing that comes with Obama's usage of the Blackberry was important to the corporation, then they would respond through technology to make the device safer than any alternatives.
Politico:
Some Verizon Wireless employees accessed billing records from a cell phone President-elect Barack Obama had used, the Obama transition and Verizon Wireless said Thursday.
Transition spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that Obama no longer uses the cell phone in question. But Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam issued a statement apologizing to Obama. He also said that whether they were authorized or not, the employees who breached the president-elect’s account face possible disciplinary action and were immediately put on leave without pay.
It’s unclear exactly what information the employees got, but a transition official said they did not listen to any of Obama’s voice mails or read any of his emails.
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