Source: Time.com
President-elect Barack Obama is keen on keeping his Blackberry, as he recently stated in an interview with CNN. It is clear that the Blackberry does awesome things when it comes to keeping in touch with friends, family, and co-workers via e-mail, text messaging, and phone calls (having owned a Blackberry for two years, I can attest to this fact). However, the security implications stemming from the President using such a hand held device while in office are grave. The privacy issue stemming from the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which requires a record be kept of every White House communication, isn’t so much of an issue. President-elect Barack Obama will simply have to think twice about what he types if he is allowed to use his Blackberry while in office (or even a laptop), something that Obama himself acknowledged during his interview with CNN :
“My working assumption, and this is not new, is that anything I write on an e-mail could end up being on CNN,” Obama said.
“So I make sure to think before I press ’send’,” he said.
The security issue on the other hand, is of much greater concern. A handheld device such as a Blackberry, in the hands of of the President of the United States, would be subject to a substantial amount of attacks and exploits by many organizations and individuals ranging from intelligence agencies and terrorist organizations to die-hard fans. The Blackberry does implement certain security technologies such as end-to-end encryption by AES and Triple-DES, which are decent for sensitive communication, but not communication at the top-secret level (since the Blackberry hasn’t been approved by the NSA for this). With that being said, it will be interesting to see what U.S. engineers or even Research In Motion can do to improve security on the Blackberry, so that someday the device can be deemed secure enough for presidential communication. The current security technology on the Blackberry as it stands, does not offer adequate protection needed for presidential communication.
What are your thoughts? Do the advantages of using a Blackberry while in office outweigh the risks?
