Obama will get an NSA enhanced blackberry

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/obama_will_get_his_blackberry.php

by vaksel • 18 years ago

21 20 18 years ago

marcambinder.theatlantic.com

andr• 18 years ago

But... will it blend?

siculars2• 18 years ago

yes.

siculars2• 18 years ago

"Obama and other officials won't be able to use Instant Messaging in the White House."

Here are some considerations to pull inter-government communication out of the last century:

https://www.yammer.com/

http://www.adiumx.com/

http://www.jabber.org/web/Main_Page

as for the super secret nsa approved barakberry - me wants one, precious!

bmelton2• 18 years ago

They're considered munitions by government employees, because of the encryption keys they're loaded with. Government employees have to 'check them in' and out like their service weapon, and aside from the encryption, don't really do anything special.

Oh, and they sell for something like $10,000.

rcoder• 18 years ago

Do you have a source for this? I'm genuinely curious, since I thought the "crypto == munitions" policies all died off years ago.

As far as maintaining proper records of who has which device, I say "bravo!" Just like stolen and lost laptops fueled much of the last 5-6 years' ID theft fears, I think mis-appropriated mobile devices will cause a whole lot of people a whole lot of stress as more and more critical information finds its way into pockets and purses.

eli• 18 years ago

On Monday, a government agency that the Obama administration -- but that is probably the National Security Agency -- added to a standard blackberry a super-encryption package.... and Obama WILL be able to use it ... still for routine and personal messages.

Whoa. Someone needs coffee before writing their blog posts. Does not parse.

Hexstream• 18 years ago

You should apt-get install probabilistic-parser. (do probabilistic parsers exist by the way?)

eru• 18 years ago

http://www.google.de/search?q=probabilistic+parser

At least some people are writing papers about them.

gecko• 18 years ago

Yes, actually. Perl uses one to handle cases of ambiguous syntax, where it's possible to "guess" the correct parse quite reliably from the surrounding context, but it's impossible to infer the true meaning simply by looking at the line by itself. (Thankfully, this technique is rare if you're writing clean code, and as far as I know, it's gone from Perl 6.)

alecco2• 18 years ago

Yeah, it was coming. I hope the Obama administration changes NSA from being the cradle of evil to something useful.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=365948 (one of many)

Spy Master http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/01/21/080121fa_fact_... A worthwhile long read.

graywh• 18 years ago

I think you've got the NSA confused with the TSA or CIA.

alecco2• 18 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michael_McConnell

  From 1992 to 1996, McConnell served as Director of the National Security Agency (NSA). He
  led NSA as it adapted to the multi-polar threats brought about by the end of the Cold War.

paulgb• 18 years ago

Is Blackberry being genericized to mean a smart-phone? The General Dynamics device doesn't look like a modified RIM product.

blogimus• 18 years ago

Only if RIM is unsuccessful at preventing trademark dilution (like Kleenex and Walkman). If you're interested in reading on trademark dilution, I found that Wikipedia has a link to this source at Boston University School of Law: http://www.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/scit...

jonknee• 18 years ago

I think it was just a guess that General Dynamics made the device. Since no one was on the record about anything, they just did a Google search for "secure pda" and came up with that one.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's a regular BlackBerry with modified software.

humanlever• 18 years ago

Most likely. The two handsets in the article are reported to run Windows. Blackberry has their own OS.

teehee• 18 years ago

I'm surprised I haven't seen blackberry capitalizing on such a prominent spokesman in their advertising.

mhartl• 18 years ago

I can't tell if the source is credible. It doesn't help that the article fails to spell "BlackBerry" correctly even once.

Obama will get an NSA enhanced blackberry

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