Solving Obama's BlackBerry Dilemma 374
CurtMonash writes "Much is being made of the deliberations as to whether President Obama will be able to keep using his beloved "BarackBerry." As the NYTimes details, there are two major sets of objections: infosecurity and legal/records retention. Deven Coldeway of CrunchGear does a good job of showing that the technological infosecurity problems can be solved. And as I've noted elsewhere, the 'Omigod, he left his Blackberry behind at dinner' issue is absurd. Presidents are surrounded by attendants, Secret Service and otherwise. Somebody just has to be given the job of keeping track of the president's personal communication device. As for the legal question of whether the president can afford to put things in writing that will likely be exposed by courts and archivists later — the answer to that surely depends on the subject matter or recipient. Email to his Chicago friends — why not? Anything he'd write to them would be necessarily non-secret anyway. Email to the Secretary of Defense? That might be a different matter."
Re:the answer is obvious. (Score:3, Interesting)
Or, why not take away his personal blackberry, and give him a government-issued one? They're already so prevalent throughout the government, so why not give him one? Then you can do the BES thing and have remote wipe, and have all emails sent through it archived. And given the encryption already on it, I'm sure it's usable for classified stuff as well.
If he wants, he can tell his friends his new email address, or forward his current emails onwards.
At least, it should be possible, no? Everyone raves about how good BES is at doing stuff and keeping records...
Regarding security and archiving (Score:4, Interesting)
I must be missing something big, but isn't the point of a Blackberry the fact that everything goes through a $business-controlled server? One that can nuke the device from orbit whenever the admin says so? One that stores all the data securely?
I thought that's pretty much why RIM was able to get Blackberries into so many businesses - they could just buy a server that would integrate with their stuff and keep it all safe.
I'd actually be upset if he wasn't using a blackberry, but a less-secure cellphone
Or am I way off the mark for some reason, and why?
Fangirls of the World Unite! (Score:5, Interesting)
This wasn't news when Bush was in office and he used a cell phone and a PDA too.
Actually, it was an issue for Bush, though it had nothing to do with phone calls or PDA functionality.
Obama is a notorious IM addict. He pretty much ran his campaign through his Blackberry. Now of course, you can use a Blackberry to make phone calls and track your appointments, but that's not why he's under pressure to give it up. The security wonks don't like the potential for text messages getting intercepted, and the lawyers don't like the legal exposure he'd get if the messages were subpoenaed or FOIAed.
I'm not sure if Bush ever had a Blackberry or a PDA, but he used to be a heavy email user. He went cold turkey when he assumed office. According to his "last email" that went out to all his correspondents, it was mainly about the legal exposure.
An NSA-approved smart phone is probably the solution to the security issue. (See one of the submissions in my sig.) I suspect Obama will just blow off the legal issue. He's supposed to be Mr. Open Government, after all.
Now I wait for my -1, didn't fangirl score.
And you'd deserve it! People who don't like fangirl stories (what happened to fanboys?) have no place on Slashdot!
But this is not a fanchild issue. Obama keeps talking about the dangers of living in the "Presidential Bubble" [washingtonpost.com]. One way he wants to avoid this is to have a lot of contacts that aren't mediated by his underlings. A Blackberry or other pocket IM device is an obvious tool for this purpose.
I suspect he's being a little naive. He's going to be in charge of the biggest bureaucracy on the planet — does he really think that he can be on a first-person basis with the whole kaboodle? But hey, he's surprised us before!
Not fully understanding the concerns... (Score:2, Interesting)
The OP doesn't seem to actually understand the concerns. First of all, information sent and received from a device like a blackberry is hardly secure. They can't very well risk having confidential information absent-mindedly entered into a note on a phone or very private numbers/emails stuck in a phone book. Beyond someone physically getting a hold of the phone, it's entirely possible for the device to be accessed via blue tooth and such, which he could turn on just tinkering with the thing.
On the note of record retention. Records passed to and from officials can meet all kinds of retention laws. They don't have to be about top secret government business to need to be retained forever. In fact, many records that are deemed to be kept forever are actually public record, that have to be presentable upon request. So if he sends a message about making a plan for business (IE asking someone to come to a meeting), depending on the context, it could be a matter of public record forever. If his phone is destroyed and the document wasn't backed up, he would be screwed as soon as a court asked for his copy.
No Exceptions.. Thats the rule. (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, Come on... We are people at SLASHDOT... That used to mean "technology folks" that were usually involved in security, technology, and BOFH's... The RULE IS: NO Personal Communications Device. NO exceptions. Sorry you don't like the rules, Now enforce it. I think that is in the BOFH Rule book someplace.
If he can't live with this rule, what about the rest? What are we to think if he constantly considers himself "above the law?" This is just a start of the trend that eventually leads to corruption. (IF it already isn't so.)
Besides, All you might need is a laser and bounce it off of the screen when he's using it and anyone could read it... (oops, wrong tech? Does that work for LCD's?)
Re:the answer is obvious. (Score:3, Interesting)
The articles mention RIM's network in all that, which causes me pause-- Is RIM still forcing people to send information to their servers? If so, can anyone give me a single good reason for that, and why I, as a customer, would want that rather than a normal IMAP+SSL connection to my own mail server?
Ok, that aside, I'm just wondering... isn't there some point at which we admit that e-mail sent over the internet, as things operate today, is just an inherently insecure method of communication? I mean, I guess you could encrypt all your messages (PGP-style), but nobody does that, and short of doing that, there's nothing to prevent someone from eavesdropping.
There's a lot to talk about here, but I hope Obama keeps fighting for his Blackberry-- not for his own sake, but it makes sense in concert with his promise to improve Internet infrastructure. If the secret service can't figure out a way for the President to have a secure smartphone, then we should be asking "what needs to happen to make that possible?" From there, the next question should be, "What needs to happen to make it possible for consumers to have access to secure smartphones?"
As per the legal angle... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:research in motion (Score:5, Interesting)
A Good Sign (Score:3, Interesting)
I consider it a good sign that Barak Obama wants to keep his Blackberry. This, if anything, shows that he is willing to step up to a greater level of accessibility and responsibility. It is certainly a feather in his cap. Plus, I am sure RIM can develop a special Blackberry device that will allow Obama to safely have classified material transmitted to him.
Re:the answer is obvious. (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, I think NPR (not sure if that is necessarily the same as PBS though) is decidedly biased as well.
I disagree. I think they've gone out of their way to show both sides of the argument even if one side has a pretty absurd argument that isn't even grounded in reality. I've seen them piss off both Liberals and Conservatives and tend to believe the old adage that you are probably doing something right if everybody is unhappy ;)
And I might add, NPR did cover the dog story on "All Things Considered." (Online here. [npr.org])
Hmm, I hadn't heard that. At least they only devoted 2 minutes and 46 seconds to it though. How much time has CNN devoted?
Re:the answer is obvious. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sarcasm aside, it is a bit annoying that suddenly, the choice of dog and the use of a communication device is "big news." It's not big news, Presidents have had communication devices for years and dogs for much longe
Well, President Bush owning an iPod was as much "big news" as this, and the Bushes aren't shy of giving their dogs media coverage. In fact, First Pets are usually well-covered and adored by the media. So, what's changed? Nothing that I can see. Heck, Laura bush recently gave a press conference on their choice of china sets for catering. Of course everything the Presidential family does will be scrutinized by the media (well, unless it's something like criminal corruption or war crimes, then they look the other way).
Re:Fangirls of the World Unite! (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, I thoroughly despise Bush Jr. (was his final press conference pathetic or what?) but on this one issue you're being a little unfair. The CYA attitude is as old as bureaucracy and as the legal profession. Which, come to think of it, are not really different entities.
A couple years ago I was called into a meeting at work. What was it about? Can't tell you, would violate my NDA. And if I did tell you, it would have to be from memory, because everybody in the meeting was to forbidden to take notes or to write email about what happened in the meeting.
I'll bend the rules a bit, and tell you that it was a really, really trivial legal issue. No bodies were being buried, no careers were at stake. Many companies would have just told their lawyers, "Your problem, do whatever is necessary." But that costs money, and we didn't have money to burn. So we picked the most cost effective strategy, and that involved created an absolutely minimal paper trail.
We were following advice that lawyers give their clients every day: minimize your exposure. That's the advice Bush's lawyers gave him 8 years ago, and that's the advice Obama's lawyers are giving him now. I like to think that Obama will ignore them in the name of open government. But he's a pragmatic guy, so he knows that making that kind of idealistic choice comes at a cost.
Obama's something of an idealist; if he weren't, I wouldn't have voted for him. (I probably wouldn't have voted at all.) But he also knows that if he makes every decision on purely idealistic grounds he's going to have lots of Right Decisions and very little to show for it. Woodrow Wilson can tell you all about that.
No doubt Bush thinks he's the same way: making the idealistic decision when he can, making the pragmatic decision when he has to. The difference is that what Bush considers to be his ideals are morally bankrupt, and his critical judgment fatally impaired.
Re:the answer is obvious. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sarcasm aside, it is a bit annoying that suddenly, the choice of dog and the use of a communication device is "big news."
We've already beaten the device issue to death, but the dog issue isn't as trivial as all that. I have a niece who volunteers in animal rescue, and she's bloody thrilled at all the publicity the rescue movement is getting out of the First Dog. The fact that the Obamas are canvassing the shelters instead of the breeders will cause a lot of others to do the same, which could save thousands of animals from being euthanized.
That's not a small thing. It's not the end of the recession or OBL's head on a pike, but if you care about the 9 million or so animals that get euthanized every year, it's not a small matter.
Re:research in motion (Score:3, Interesting)
As per my other comments - Legislative Assembly != Parliament, regardless of what wikipedia says.
Re:research in motion (Score:2, Interesting)
The one major issue with thi... RIM is a foreign company.
Well golly! I wonder what other things this man depends on in his daily life are made by foreign companies....
EVERYTHING? How about you? Have you been compromised?
Re:Executive Power (Score:3, Interesting)
You're taking it as a given that those missing emails got trashed on purpose. But this is the kind of IT screwup that happens every day. Innocent until proven guilty, yada yada. Like so many things that have happened in the last eight years, that episode deserves to be observed with Hanlon's Razor [wikiquote.org] in mind. Really, GWB is the poster child for that principle.
I admit that the Bush administration has a pretty bad record when it comes to obeying the law. But their usual strategy is to hide behind weird legal theories that don't stand up in court (an outcome that any sane lawyer would predict). They're simply not competent enough to succeed at the kind of conspiratorial skullduggery you give them credit for.
Re:research in motion (Score:4, Interesting)
Very true, though I don't think it really matters what company does it provided the security is set up properly. As TFS mentions, the public record thing is really the main issue. However,
Email to his Chicago friends â" why not? Anything he'd write to them would be necessarily non-secret anyway. Email to the Secretary of Defense? That might be a different matter.
Seems like it would be the other way around to me - I certainly wouldn't want _my_ personal communications becoming part of the public record for the rest of eternity. Of course there's certain issues of practicality of internal secrets going into the public record, but past /. discussions have suggested using some sort of proxy-type person where it would go through someone who would email the president with a "new message from X about Y - would you like to receive it knowing that the communication will become part of the public record" type of message.
Or maybe the laws regarding this kind of stuff are stupid. Seems that personal stuff should remain personal, and that anything @whitehouse.gov would go into the archives, but the president (and related staff) would be legally required to use the appropriate address and that the personal account(s) could be audited during the presidency to ensure that no funny business is taking place.
Dunno. But considering that Obama probably wouldn't have taken the top job were it not for all of the internet-based efforts, it would be Pretty Fucking Stupid to cut him off.
Re:Who Cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:research in motion (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you think that it would take more than five minutes for a foreign hostile agent to rip out the batteries so it cant be wiped?
but this is a moo point as the issue is about privacy, not security. Whereas what is discussed over the phone can be forgotten when needed, what is sent by email is stored and so he cant "not recall" those emails he sent to the some big oil exec.
Re:Executive Power (Score:3, Interesting)
You're taking it as a given that those missing emails got trashed on purpose. But this is the kind of IT screwup that happens every day.
You're putting the federal government at the same level as a newbie IT team with no budget.
Innocent until proven guilty, yada yada. That's the proof standard for a conviction, not an investigation. In any case, we already know the data was destroyed.
Like so many things that have happened in the last eight years, that episode deserves to be observed with Hanlon's Razor in mind. Really, GWB is the poster child for that principle.
Hanlon's razor has no intellectual basis. It is a guide for interpersonal relationships, not a tool for getting at the truth.
Besides, how much benefit of the doubt does one man get?
I admit that the Bush administration has a pretty bad record when it comes to obeying the law. But their usual strategy is to hide behind weird legal theories that don't stand up in court (an outcome that any sane lawyer would predict). They're simply not competent enough to succeed at the kind of conspiratorial skullduggery you give them credit for.
Can you really be unaware about how ruthlessly effective they've been at accruing power, stealing money, and breaking the law?
Do you really think these guys don't know how to keep a secret? If so, a few billion of us would like answers to the following.
What did the Whitehouse decided about torture?
Why were the US Attorney's fired?
What is the nature and what is the purpose of the illegal wire tapping operation?
Where did the billions of dollars in cash that disappeared into Army planes go to?
Who is in CIA secret prisons?
What nation's agents were in contact with the 9/11 terrorists?
What happened to the bailout money?
Why does the administration fight efforts to investigate war profiteers?
Why the hell did we invade Iraq, anyway?
And most importantly (and what incidentally blows Hanlon's Razor, surely the dullest razor ever devised, out of the water):
Why didn't the Bush admin do anything to correct these crimes and punish the criminals?
Re:research in motion (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with most of what you wrote. However, it isn't entirely in keeping with the constitution.
The US is not a parliamentary democracy - it is a 3-branch government. The president is actually on equal footing with all of congress within the constitutional bounds of his office. Other than the ability to impeach the president, the congress does not have any particular special investigatory power over the president.
Most western democracies use a parliamentary system of government. The prime minister is the chief executive, but is merely an appointed representative of the legislature. The prime minister serves at the pleasure of the legislature and is fully answerable to it. The relationship is similar to a CEO and the board of directors - the CEO is just a regular company employee that the board has hired to run day-to-day operations.
In the US the president is directly elected, and while there are checks and balances in general the office of the president is completely independent of the legislature. There is a duty to uphold the laws of the US, but no real accountability for not doing so (other than impeachment).
The problem with Bush wasn't that he thumbed his nose at Congress so much as the fact that he was elected (twice!) in the first place. Like it or not more Americans supported him than opposed him (at least up until 2004). You can debate the 2000 election of course, but the fact is that even if he should have lost it would have only been by a slim margain. When a nation supports a president that uses his power in the way it was used, then there is little that can be done to stop it. Like it or not, he had the backing of the populace. Even with the abuses, there really wasn't enough popular support for an impeachment to make it happen. (Just look at how long it took to get rid of Gray Davis in a state known for political activism.)
Honestly, I think I'd prefer a parlimentary proporational democracy to what we have today. However, that isn't the nation we currently live in, and I don't see 3/4ths of the states voting for such a major overhaul of the constitution. So, we're stuck...